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For decades, high school athletes have excelled on the field and in the classroom, hoping to land a college scholarship, but now the game has changed.
Student-athletes can now make money off their name, image and likeness. Now, these kids and their parents are strategizing to maximize their potential.
Taj Anderson is a 14-year-old eighth grader at a private Christian school in Orlando. He excels in the classroom with constant spots on the honor roll and on the field, playing baseball and football.
Anderson’s current goal is to play football at a large university.
He’s dominant. Anderson plays for the Orlando Gators, an elite football team for kids expected to go to the next level. He is so good that he was recognized to play in the Under Armor All-American eighth-grade game last year.
“So he was able to go and compete with all the best eighth graders in the country last year, but at the time, which is this past January, he was about 5 feet, 4 inches to 5 feet, 5 inches, and about, like, 120 pounds. And I’m looking around at these kids that are so developed, some of these kids are a whole year older than Taj, but they’re all in the same class,” said Trevor Anderson, Taj Anderson’s dad.
That realization made this family do something drastic. They enrolled 14-year-old Taj Anderson for another year of eighth grade.
Since then, Taj Anderson has grown 6 inches and about 30 pounds in the last nine months.
“What was in your mind when you were thinking, ‘I got to repeat eighth grade?'” WESH’s 2 Anchor Stew Moore asked.
“There tends to be this thing where people are, like, reclassing. Why would you do that? You’re just going to leave all your friends behind and all. The one thing I always said was you have to look at the bigger picture, right? And the bigger picture is being able to get a whole extra year to develop and, you know, build up your body, build up your brains, your mental ability capacity and be able to compete with people that are also grown and developed. Because, think about it, high school, you’ll be a freshman playing against people four years older than you. It’s going to be same in college. So just being able to get that extra year, being able to prepare a little bit more, it’s really helpful,” Taj Anderson said.
Clinton Reyes, owner of King Sports and Entertainment, said this practice is expected to become more common.
For many children, it revolves around name, image and likeness, or NIL.
“So there’s going to be some stipulations that come with that. It’s not going to just be a free game. There’s going to be categories that are still impermissible, but for the most part, you know this, 2024-2025 school year, you know kids will be able to make some serious money,” Reyes said.
Reyes represents 22 athletes ranging from the NFL, to the Little League World Series legend Mo’ne Davis, to University of Ducks star corner Jahlil Florence.
He’s got some big-league advice for Taj Anderson and other athletes like him.
“Not all money is good money, that’s for sure,” Reyes said. “I have had high school student-athletes reach out to me, their guardians, their parents. But how we operate here at King Sports is we want to gather our data first. We want to make sure we can calculate decisions. We’re recruiting the best young men and women that can, you know, excel at the next level, but I still have to get some market data on this. But what’s happening now is it’s accelerating at such a rapid rate that you need to hop on a bandwagon, or you can get left behind.”
Trevor Anderson played for the University of Central Florida. He also played pro slamball in China and has coached on multiple youth levels for 20 years.
Trevor Anderson explained that the world of athletics has transformed significantly to a complex intersection of branding and marketability.
“They’re not just looking at are a good player. They’re looking at, as Taj said earlier, is he marketable, right? Is he brandable? Is he somebody that we can depend on to help our program get more attention and to add value to us? And you know, that’s why the game is completely changed in that respect,” Trevor Anderson said.
“When I think of nil, I think of a lot of money getting thrown around nowadays. People being able to get paid just because they’re brandable, they’re likable, their name holds weight or something. We’ve been fortunate enough to not have to worry about money our lives, but it’d definitely be helpful to be able to, you know, give back,” Taj Anderson said.
To put this all into perspective, one of the highest earners in college this year, Shedeur Sanders, the quarterback for the University of Colorado, earns $6.2 million annually. Livvy Dunne, a gymnastic athlete at LSU, earns $4 million, while former Monteverde baller Cooper Flagg is expected to rake in $2.6 million next year as a freshman at Duke, according to the sports website On3.
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