The NIL landscape is catching fire quickly in today’s age, and it isn’t just for college athletes. More and more states are allowing high school players to sign NIL deals, and we already saw the entire St. John Bosco High School football team ink an NIL deal earlier this year.
Earlier this month, Oregon became the 19th state to allow high school players to sign NIL deals, and they are already reaping the benefits of it.
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West Linn High School point guard Jackson Shelstad and Jesuit High wing Sofia Bell, both Oregon hoops commits, have signed NIL deals with Portland Gear, a clothing brand.
The company posted the announcement on its Instagram page with excitement as they become the first high-school athletes to ink deals.
“Portland Gear is proud to announce the first-ever endorsement deal with high school athletes in the history of Oregon. This past week it went into law that Oregon High School student-athletes could sign NIL deals and we want to lead off with a bang and make history by being the first!”
Both of these players are headed to the University of Oregon to play for the Ducks, and each one comes with an impressive list of accolades.
Bell is a top-30 recruit and the daughter of former Oregon Ducks star Greg Bell. Bell had a lot of offers, with Cal, USC, Gonzaga, and Notre Dame as some of the offers that came her way.
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Shelstad is a four-star recruit and the top-ranked prospect in Oregon, so Dana Altman’s team is getting a terrific player in 2023 and a hometown kid.
The terms of the deals weren’t announced, but the West Coast continues to move quickly on these high school NIL deals. On the other side of things, some states still aren’t on board: Georgia and Texas are a couple of states who still haven’t agreed to high school deals.
With more and more players inking deals in high school, we could see more states move quickly to make these changes.
