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Washington Lion (Washington Post story)
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Date Posted: 23:48:50 12/16/24 Mon
A middle school football power faces the new price of success: NIL
By Matt Cohen
Late in the summer of 2023, before the 60-odd middle-schoolers would go undefeated for the seventh straight regular season and win another D.C. championship — before they had even completed a practice — their coach took them to Chase Bank.
Mike Sharrieff likes to run his football program in a professional manner. He requires his players to maintain a 3.0 GPA, a full point higher than the D.C. school system’s minimum for athletics eligibility. If they fall below his mark, they’re required to attend school on Saturday. Practice, study hall, bus trips to games and community service days are all part of this football machine Sharrieff has built at John Hayden Johnson Middle School in Southeast Washington.
But in the modern game, running a successful football program means teaching players how to deal with the name, image and likeness (NIL) deals that are reshaping the game — even among middle-schoolers. At least five of Johnson’s players have NIL agreements as the arms race for talent extends deeper and deeper into the grassroots game.
The money that drives football doesn’t end in college, where NIL deals have come to shape the game, or the NFL, where multimillion-dollar contracts are signed every week. Since the NCAA opened the door to financial agreements in 2021, amateur athletes who had previously not been allowed to accept money for their name, image or likeness have begun to cash in. Slowly, those benefits began to trickle down to younger athletes. Athletics organizations in 41 states and D.C. have policies allowing NIL agreements in high school, and most of those permit deals in youth sports, too. So the power of money in football now extends to the whiteboard in Sharrieff’s office, which features a list of the local businesses he needs to schmooze to help his program.
The Panthers are not an ordinary middle school team. They are a certified powerhouse, with a regular season winning streak approaching 80 games and nine city championships since 2004. Sharieff has been coaching at Johnson since 2002, and he could sense this change coming. He knew it might recast his role. So he taught each player how to open a checking account and brought in a bank representative to talk to parents. Johnson is located in Ward 8, where the rate of violent crimes with a gun is second highest in the city and the poverty rate is more than double the U.S. average. Not every student has the opportunity for change. Sharieff wants his players to know how best to capitalize on their talents. ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2024/12/12/johnson-middle-school-football-money/
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