Florida is on the frontier of the new era of high school sports.
Florida allows high schoolers to earn money through endorsements and sponsorships, which has changed the landscape of student-athletes and their schools across the state.
School choice means student-athletes can switch schools searching for teams, coaches and the best facilities.
Who wins when players can transfer looking for playing time and paydays? Who enforces the rules?
Dan Cornely, director of sports management programs at Florida Atlantic University, joined Tom Hudson on "The Florida Roundup" to talk about how paying student athletes is a whole different ballgame.
The transcript below has been edited for clarity and brevity.
How would you describe today's high school sports environment as the football season is stepping off, compared to just five years ago?
Vastly different in terms of, you see players playing for different teams that did not traditionally play for, let's say, their hometown team.
There were some rules in place where students could go to another county and play for a coach. And there's certain enticements with name, image and likeness as far as, "Hey, if you come here, there could be an opportunity for for some money." So, it's a little bit different from that perspective.
School choice has been the name of the game for academics and athletics for more than a decade here. So what has really accelerated this? What's driving this change?
There was a House bill that that came into play, 7029. But beyond that, I think once we have sort of this trickle-down effect from college athletics with name, image and likeness, it's everyone's peeking over their shoulder. "Hey, how do I get that opportunity? How do I get that exposure to then use my name to get paid?" So, folks are looking for that.
TWO KEY FLORIDA LAWS
- 2016 (HB 7029): Made transfers easier, allowing athletes to switch schools and remain immediately eligible under broad conditions.
- 2026 (SB 538): Tightened the 2016 law, limiting participation outside a student’s home district and generally barring playing for two schools in a school year.
— Rick Mayer
How lucrative is NIL for high schoolers in Florida? It's been in play for two or three seasons now.
It's lucrative for the top 1%, the elites, right? So, you have this dynamic where you have these top athlete groups, and certainly football, basketball, baseball would fall into this bucket. And so you're going to see some big, big deals, but unfortunately, we can't see the amount. That doesn't really need to be reported.
But on the other side, you may have other deals where student-athletes can take opportunities of working out at a gym for free if they use their image to market the gym. So you have like this wide range of either the elite or the, "Hey, we can get a free gym membership."
So it's not just dollars that exchange hands, perhaps services or products are changing hands.
Sure, absolutely, yep.
The Wall Street Journal has reported about thousands of high school athletic transfers this year, an increase of 25%, more than 7,000. So how does it work?
The athletes just need to make sure that they they work with their athletic director and coach and and once they're good to go, it's a pretty simple process. They enter. It's not like in college where they have to enter a transfer portal and and these things. It's a little bit more streamlined in that regard.
So that's where you're seeing students just, boom, here you go. And even as of last year, I think we had a player that played at four .. during the season, you could see transfers, which is pretty outlandish in the sports world.
Sarasota Booker High School canceled its varsity football season. The team had gone to three straight final four playoffs. The coach was let go and at least 21 players left. An investigation found that eighth-graders were allowed to practice with the high schoolers. How unusual is canceling an entire season after a few playoff runs?
Left: Neimann Lawrence (8) transferred from Ransom Everglades to Northwestern ahead of the 2025 season, joining a powerhouse coming off a state championship under coach Teddy Bridgewater. However, Bridgewater was suspended before the season began, and in 2026, Lawrence transferred to American Heritage.
Right: Days after leading West Broward to a state title game, A’mir Sears (1) announced his move to Columbus due to “a lot of movement within the (West Broward) program that is out of my control.” In July, he committed to the University of Miami, citing his relationship with coach Mario Cristobal, whose son also plays at Columbus.
It's very rare, and in that case, I think we can suspect that program was getting poached, and those students were leaving, so they didn't have the numbers to support it. And so, in turn, they probably said, "Hey, we need practice players. OK, well, we have eighth-graders." And so that probably got them into the issue there.
And so I think that's a direct correlation of this transfer game. And you can see that is a negative effect for that program, folks getting poached and unfortunately having to cancel a season, which I would say is tragic in Florida for the high school football world.
What are some of these rules around NILs? Who's enforcing them? Who's watching?
The schools and the players are supposed to report it to the [Florida High School Athletic] Association, and so they'll do that, but they don't have to disclose the amount. So that's part of it, but there's also an undercurrent that goes on, and quite frankly, that's always gone on.
But technically, they're supposed to self-report these deals that go on, and we don't really know the amounts, just kind of the amounts that the athletes stated and reported. So it's quite hard to actually track from a monetary value what is actually occurring at the high school level.
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Where does classroom performance ultimately figure into this, if at all?
Certainly, athletes need to be eligible. So that's part of it, but I do think it can be a driving factor for students too, just like any sport, I don't think that changes. If they're playing a sport, they want to be eligible to graduate and move on.
I use football as an example. It's such a great tool to develop young human beings, right? And so for the most part, high school coaches are getting into it to develop folks, and football's a sport specifically where everybody has a different role and they people could be from everywhere, every corner of the Earth even. And so you get to learn how to work together in one unit, and I think that's extremely valuable. And in turn, you do things really well in the field, then that trickles into the academic part as well.
And how about the impact on school community: neighborhood schools, alma maters, loyalty, even athletic boosterism, right, which is the financial support of student-athletes?
Currently, we're seeing in real time that's fading away. And so, some folks may want to hold onto that, "Hey, a group of of students played together through youth and knew each other and they're playing for the same high school team." It's starting to be rarer and rarer as we go on because if, let's say, you're a star and you're not getting the playing time you want, you're going to go try to find the exposure for college and then certainly to try and get maybe an NIL deal with that.
This story was compiled from interviews conducted by Tom Hudson for "The Florida Roundup." You can listen to the full interview in the media player above.
