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A member of the Philadelphia City Council wants the city to provide legal aid for the families of high school athletes who choose careers to capitalize on their reputations and image.
The action by Congressman Isaiah Thomas, who is also a youth basketball coach, comes as the state board that governs student-athletes to send high school students to earn money from endorsements, commercials, sponsored social media, and the like.
The law, which was released Thursday, has eight cosponsors, a sign that it may have the support of a majority in the Council. The bill would establish the “Philly NIL Youth Protection Fund,” to pay families with incomes of less than $150,000 a year to spend up to five hours with an attorney or accountant who can review contracts and other resources.
The bill also requires the city to create and distribute educational materials to all Philadelphia students that are appropriate for what is known as “Name, Description and Arrangement”. Thomas says that many of Philadelphia’s student-athletes can be courted each year by companies looking to sign them, but many more are possible.
“These are opportunities that can change the lives of young people,” Thomas said Thursday. “But at the same time, we also know that there is always a lot of harassment involved when money is involved.”
The Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association’s board of directors last month approved changes to its rules that allow high school players to sign NIL contracts, as long as they follow certain rules, otherwise they cannot. displaying the company logo during the game. The amendments will need to be passed by the body once more – possibly at the December meeting – to take effect.
More than a dozen states have allowed high school athletes to monetize their names and likenesses, and Pennsylvania’s proposal comes just a year after the NCAA approved the college student-athletes to sign NIL contracts.
Thilo Kunkel, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin and director of the school’s Sports Industry Research Center, said offering legal advice to high school athletes could be very beneficial to those who are sued. for low prices.
High-level players who negotiate six-figure contracts seem to have clients and a support system, Kunkel said, but a low-level player who is paid $1,000 for an Instagram post is a little much. know more about what they are signing up for.
“What we’re seeing at the college level is, if you have 1,000 Instagram followers, you have an interesting, different social media following, you can sign NIL contracts,” he said. “And we’ve seen some abuses, or we’ve seen players sign contracts that don’t suit them in the long term.”
The legislation in the Council was referred to a committee for further consideration.
During the same Council meeting on Thursday, Council member Jamie Gauthier, who represents West Philadelphia, introduced legislation to rename the Mill Creek Recreation Center after Tiffany Fletcher, the Parks and Recreation employee who was killed by a stray bullet there in September.
Fletcher, 41, works as a pool maintenance worker at a recreation center in the 4700 block of Brown Street — two blocks from his family’s home in West Philadelphia. Gauthier said it’s important to Fletcher that “the children in his community have a clean and safe playground year-round.”
“I hope the center will serve as a lasting reminder of Tiffany’s love for the community,” Gauthier said, “her life was so important.”
Interview staff writer Sean Collins Walsh contributed to this article.
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