Xavier Payne, a freshman offensive lineman at the University of Colorado, never went to a dance at his Orlando, Fla., high school.
“We didn’t have the money to spend,” said Payne, 17, who was raised by a single mother with three younger children.
But last month, flush from a six-figure Name, Image and Likeness, or NIL, compensation package, Payne returned to Florida to attend the Jones High prom with his old classmates. He arrived in a $180,000 Mercedes wearing a $2,500 custom suit, $1,100 Christian Louboutin shoes and vintage Cartier watch he said was worth about $40,000.
Welcome to prom in the NIL era. Young superstars are remaking the high school rite of passage into a cultural phenomenon all their own, part victory lap and part personal branding opportunity.
Elite football programs now expect recruits to graduate from high school in December of their senior year so they can be on campus in January to learn playbooks and train with teammates.
That means that while high school classmates are finishing up their last semester, these athletes are collecting NIL checks.
It’s no small amount. Opendorse, the NIL marketplace and tech company, projects that freshman athletes across all sports will rake in $780 million in the next school year.
“There’s like this—I don’t want to say competition—but everyone’s thinking about how big they can go and how flashy they can be,” said Justin Giangrande, a sports agent based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
And, in the case of University of Oregon wide receiver Dakorien Moore, that amounted to upward of $80,000.
Sure hope there’s some money being saved by the families/athletes amongst all this.