One smallish leap

 Well, well, well. Now they've gone and done it.

Kinda.

Sorta.

In a really, really careful way, like when you ask someone "Is this safe?", and he or she says "Yeah, it's safe", and then you say "Are you sure?", and he or she says "Sure, I'm sure", and then you say "Gee, I don't know ..."

This was the Indiana High School Athletic Association yesterday.

Which stuck its toe in the NIL waters by voting to approve an NIL structure for its high school athletes, although it won't be called NIL and has restrictions on its restrictions, just to keep high school kids from signing exclusive personal services deals with Big Harve's Gently Used Lawn Tractors, a longtime supporter of Pudville Consolidated High School athletics.

Nah. None of that for the IHSAA. What they voted to approve yesterday will not be called "NIL" but "PBA," which stands for "personal branding activities" and is not to be confused with that other PBA, the Professional Bowlers Association.

Under the  "personal branding activities" PBA, Indiana high school athletes will be allowed to engage in branding activities that include "social media, personal appearances and endorsement activities unrelated to their school athletic participation." In other words, they can't "perform personal athletic services", or appear in their high school uniform, or in any other way use represent their high school in a "branding activity."

That means, presumably, that Big Harve can't say, "This here's Flip Wannamaker, star quarterback for the Pudville Fightin' Pine Knots, demonstratin' what a great job our gently-used lawn tractors do. Go ahead, Flip, fire that puppy up and take it for a spin!"

And Flip dutifully fires it up and mows a strip or two, his aqua No. 17 Pudville jersey proudly rippling in the breeze.

Now, I don't know if the IHSAA's restrictions will prevent some Flip from Indiana to be identified as an athlete at a specific high school in some TV ad, or if he'll just be an unidentified high school kid who shows up eating a cheeseburger at the Burgers 'N' Such Cafe and gets paid for it. Except for the getting paid for it part, after all, it wouldn't be the first time a local high school athlete appeared in the background of a TV commercial or in a social media ad for some local business or other.

So the IHSAA is taking a baby step here. A smallish leap for mankind, if you will. A tentative concession to the new age, when not only good old Flip but his teammates can make a little on the side.

Although I don't know how the IHSAA gets around the obvious fact their "branding opportunities" unavoidably will be tied to their "high school athletic participation," even if the IHSAA says that's a no-no. I mean, those opportunities are going to happen precisely because of their high school athletic participation, right?

Just one Gordian knot the IHSAA will have to hack through now that it's decided (reluctantly) to join modern times. There will surely be others.

However distasteful the IHSAA, and the rest of us, may find that prospect.