Mikey Williams Makes History Becoming The First Ever High School Player To Sign An NIL Deal, Expected To Make MILLIONS
[Source] - "The NIL rules provide a new opportunity for someone like me who that has put in so much energy and effort into building a community," Williams told ESPN in a statement. "I am excited to be the first high school athlete to make this move. I love to hoop and I love engaging with my fans and look forward to continuing to share my journey with everyone."
While legislation recently allowed for college athletes to financially profit from Name and Likeness endorsement opportunities, no high school prospect unaffiliated with a college program has shown the ability to generate the revenue that Williams appears on the cusp of earning -- including the possibility of a major shoe deal.
"He's a rare, one of a kind athlete in this space," Davis told ESPN. "We're going to build out his national profile and take big swings.
As I blog this, I'm shocked this isn't being talked about more on Twitter. This is a massive deal as Mikey Williams becomes the first high school athlete to sign an NIL deal. I did wonder when we would see this. There are massive names in high school basketball and with it being clearly open to sign NIL deals, I figured someone would cash in. My money was on Emoni Bates, but Mikey Williams makes a ton of sense. He's one of the most followed athletes out there, he's a top-5 recruit on the 247 Composite. He made a bunch of news last year when he dropped his top-10 and had 5 HBCU's there and talked about how he wanted to go to an HBCU. More importantly he shoved Coach K in a locker.
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Here's the thing - we're starting to see guys go different routes. Whether it's overseas, the G League or you look at Anthony Edwards to Georgia, guys like Fultz/Stewart/McDaniels to Washington, Cade Cunningham to Oklahoma State, Evan Mobley to USC, etc, guys aren't just always going to the typical blue blood programs. This is something that could happen with Mikey Williams and going to one of the HBCU's. Hell, we're still a couple years away from Mikey Williams even playing college ball or going pro, so who the hell knows, but he's about to make a shit ton of money.
It's not really a surprise to see someone sign an NIL deal at this level. We're seeing the Overtime Elite League sign top recruits, which is a league for high school players where they'll still receive schooling but get a salary to play basketball. We're seeing different prep schools pop up and all that stuff. I gotta admit, I don't hate it. Think about it this way - we do everything possible to figure out our career path going through college and all that shit. We pick majors and take those classes. Well a guy like Mikey Williams, his major is basketball. Let him figure out how to negotiate deals, handle agents, money management, all that shit that comes with being a basketball player.
Oh, and yeah, he's that good: