Permitted, with conditions
NCHSAA athletes may sign NIL agreements under State Board of Education Rule 16 NCAC 06E .0211. Every condition below must be met, and the full contract must be disclosed before signing.
Compliance
The rules, exactly as written.
High school NIL is legal in North Carolina and banned for public-school athletes in South Carolina. Everything below is sourced to the governing bodies’ own documents — because eligibility is the one thing no deal is worth losing.
North and South Carolina are documented here in full because they are our home states. High school NIL is governed state by state, and the rules are not close to uniform. For athletes elsewhere in the Southeast we work from that state’s own association handbook and confirm every requirement in writing before anything is signed.
Banned outright
The SCHSL amended its amateur-status bylaw for 2025–26: “A student may not earn compensation from the use of their name, image, and likeness.” No exceptions, no disclosure path.
Permitted, separately
SCISA schools operate under their own Blue Book, which allows NIL activity provided it stays separate from interscholastic athletics and uses no school marks.
North Carolina · NCHSAA
Nine conditions. Every one of them, every time.
Per the NCHSAA's official NIL Packet, an agreement is compliant only if all of the following are true.
✓Compensation is not conditioned on the receipt, type or extent of the student's athletic performance.
✓If the student is under 18, the parent or legal guardian is a party to the agreement.
✓The student — and the parent or guardian, if under 18 — has completed the NFHS NIL education course before entering the agreement.
✓Required liability hold-harmless language is included.
✓The agreement complies with state and federal law.
✓All required disclosures have been made to the school and the NCHSAA.
✓The agreement does not require use of the name, uniform, mascot, mark or logo of a school, membership entity, conference, the NCHSAA or the NFHS.
✓The agreement does not require promotion or endorsement during athletic competition or school events.
✓The agreement does not require promotion of a prohibited category or of anything that would disrupt school operations.
Source: NCHSAA Name, Image and Likeness and the NCHSAA NIL Packet, January 2025.
Prohibited categories
Nine industries, off the table.
An NIL agreement may not require an NCHSAA student-athlete to promote or endorse any of these, regardless of how the money is structured. We screen every inbound offer against this list before it reaches the family.
✕Adult establishments and adult entertainment services
✕Alcohol and alcoholic products
✕Tobacco, vaping and nicotine products
✕Cannabis and related products
✕Controlled substances
✕Opioids and prescription drugs
✕Weapons, firearms and ammunition
✕Casinos and gambling, including sports betting
✕Activities that would disrupt school operations
The disclosure chain
Six recipients. Before signing.
The proposed agreement must be disclosed to all of the following before it is entered into. The NCHSAA has no numeric grace period — the disclosure precedes the signature.
School principal
Athletic director
Local superintendent
Non-boarding parochial schools are exempt from this one.
Board of education chair
Or the governing body of the membership entity.
Head coach of every sport
Any sport the athlete will play during the term of the agreement.
The NCHSAA
Certification of Compliance, the full unredacted contract, and NFHS course certificates. “The NCHSAA cannot accept an NIL packet if the contract has any redacted information.”
The penalty falls on the athlete. The NCHSAA states it plainly: failing to comply with State Board of Education and NCHSAA guidelines “may render the student-athlete ineligible.” There are no dollar thresholds in the rule — a $200 local deal carries the same obligations as a national one.
South Carolina
One state, two completely different answers.
NIL compensation is prohibited
The South Carolina High School League amended Article III, Section 14 (Amateur Status) for the 2025–26 school year to state that a student may not earn compensation from the use of their name, image and likeness. The change was compelled by a state budget proviso barring public districts from affiliating with any association that permits NIL compensation.
- First violation: formal warning; return all money or awards and remove the promotion immediately
- Second violation: ineligible for all SCHSL athletics for one year
- Third violation: determined case by case, based on whether the violation was knowing or reckless
One narrow carve-out survives: an athlete may still accept a standard fee for instructing, supervising or officiating in an organized youth program not operated by a member school or the SCHSL.
NIL is permitted, with separation
The South Carolina Independent School Association's 2025–26 Blue Book takes the opposite position: a student-athlete may retain eligibility and engage in NIL activities for financial gain, provided the NIL activity and their participation in interscholastic athletics remain separate.
- No use of school uniforms, logos or names
- No reference to SCISA accolades or championships
- Conditions broadly similar to North Carolina's framework
For a South Carolina family, the single most consequential compliance fact is which association their school belongs to. That is the first question we ask.
Sources: SCHSL 2025–26 By-laws, Article III §14, SCHSL approved budget provisos, Sports Illustrated and the SCISA 2025–26 Blue Book.
Athlete-agent law
Why we call ourselves advisors.
Both Carolinas regulate athlete agents by statute, entirely separately from the high school NIL rules. North Carolina's Uniform Athlete Agents Act requires registration with the Secretary of State — with an explicit exemption for a student-athlete's spouse, parent, sibling or guardian. Cameron Dollar advises his brother Jaxon as a sibling, within that exemption.
South Carolina is stricter and, in the sources we have reviewed, contains no comparable family exemption. Its definition of athlete agent is broad, its registration fees are high, and unregistered solicitation of a student-athlete is a misdemeanor. Its NIL agency contracts cap agent compensation at 20% of contract value, and any agency contract with a minor must be signed by the parent or guardian with a 14-day right to cancel.
So we are precise about what we are. Dollar Performance provides NIL education, deal preparation, brand strategy and athletic development. Where an engagement would constitute athlete-agent activity under either state's statute, we say so up front and bring in properly registered or licensed professionals.
Sources: N.C. Gen. Stat. §78C-88, the NC Secretary of State Athlete Agent office, Eldreth Law's summary of the NC exemption, S.C. Code Title 59, Chapter 102, SC Department of Consumer Affairs and S.C. Code §59-102-100.
Not legal advice. This page is an educational summary of publicly available rules, current as of the 2025–26 school year. Dollar Performance is not a law firm. Rules change, and every situation is specific. Confirm anything consequential with your school's athletic director and a licensed attorney in your state — we will help you do exactly that.
College is a different system. Once an athlete reaches campus, the NCHSAA framework is replaced by the House v. NCAA settlement structure approved in June 2025: revenue sharing under an institutional cap, the College Sports Commission, and third-party deals of $600 or more reported through the NIL Go clearinghouse within five business days. We manage that handoff so nothing gets missed in the transition year. How that system is actually working ↓
| Association | NIL allowed | Disclosure required |
|---|---|---|
| NCHSAA (NC public & member) | Yes, with conditions | Yes, before signing |
| SCHSL (SC public) | No | Not applicable |
| SCISA (SC private) | Yes, kept separate | Not specified in bylaws |
The college transition
The college rules are still being written. That is the honest version.
Most firms will tell a family the college system is settled now that the House settlement is in place. It is not. Understanding exactly how unsettled it is happens to be one of the more valuable things we do.
The College Sports Commission was created to police this. A year in, the people running it say plainly that it has not gotten where it needs to be. Its chief executive, Bryan Seeley, has said he assumed the settlement rules were settled and that his job would be enforcing them — and instead found much of the role was redefining and interpreting rules while schools moved faster than the regulations did. Athletic directors have said out loud that the commission can only go so far on its own.
The clearinghouse itself is under strain. NIL Go was not built for the volume it received: review times stretched out, deals came back repeatedly for more information, and roughly $90 million in third-party deals sat uncleared as of June 30, 2026. When deals get denied, athletes push back — eighteen Nebraska football players contested denials totaling more than a million dollars, and an arbitrator upheld the denials. Meanwhile the conferences themselves have been publicly frustrated with enforcement gaps around tampering, eligibility waivers and the roster spending cap, with one account of the current market quoting a school official describing the workarounds in far blunter terms than any of us would put in writing.
None of that is an invitation to ignore the rules. It is the opposite. When enforcement is inconsistent and interpretations move, the athletes who get hurt are the ones who assumed somebody else was watching. A deal that cleared for a teammate last spring is not proof yours will clear this fall, and a practice nobody was penalized for is not the same thing as a practice that is permitted.
Nothing here is static
College football is expanding and rewriting its own rulebook while the season runs. Guidance issued in one window has been revised by the next. Any advisor claiming to have this permanently figured out is telling you something that cannot be true.
We track it weekly, not annually
We read the commission’s guidance memos as they are issued, follow the disputes and arbitration outcomes, and update what we tell families the same week it changes rather than at the end of a season.
Small firms turn faster
Being small is the advantage here. There is no committee between a rule changing and our athletes hearing about it. When the framework shifts mid-season, we adapt in days and tell you exactly what changed and what it costs you.
What we will never do. We will not build a family’s plan around the assumption that a rule will go unenforced. Weak enforcement is a risk to manage, not a strategy to use. Every deal we take to a college athlete is submitted, documented and defensible on the day it is signed — because the enforcement environment three years from now is not the one we are standing in today.
Seeley’s comments on interpreting rather than merely enforcing rules, and Oklahoma athletic director Roger Denny’s remarks on the commission’s limits, are reported by The Athletic. NIL Go review-time strain and the volume of associated-entity deals are reported by The Athletic; that report also records more than 21,000 deals worth $166.5 million approved and 711 worth $29.3 million unapproved as of the end of February 2026. The approximately $90 million in third-party deals uncleared as of June 30, 2026 is reported by Reuters, which also notes third-party deals remain uncapped while institutional payments sit under a cap of just over $20 million annually. The arbitrator’s decision upholding the denial of eighteen Nebraska players’ deals is reported by The Athletic. Conference frustration over tampering, eligibility and roster-cap enforcement is reported by Yahoo Sports. Current commission guidance is published by the College Sports Commission. Conditions described here are as of September 2026 and are expected to change.
Already been offered a deal?
Do not sign it yet. Send it to us first.
We will read the agreement, tell you what is wrong with it, and tell you what has to be filed before it can be signed — whether or not you ever become a client.