As colleges across the country compete to attract top athletes to their biggest sports, a bill making its way through the New Hampshire State House would protect students’ ability to earn money from their name, image, and likeness here, but under certain conditions.

House Bill 312, sponsored by Republican Rep. Mike Moffett of Loudon, aims to set some guidelines on what post-secondary educational institutions can do and sets some limitations on the types of commercial deals student-athletes can pursue. It’s sponsored by seven Republicans and one Democrat.

Called the “New Hampshire Fair Play Act,” the bill would allow student-athletes to make NIL deals, hire legal representation, and keep their scholarships regardless of NIL earnings, it also states that institutions shall not “provide a prospective student-athlete with compensation in relation to the student-athlete name, image, or likeness.” In other words, it bans schools from directly offering money to prospective student-athletes to sign with them.

The proposed bill also aims to set limits on the sources of NIL deals student-athletes can sign. It prohibits them from inking NIL deals that would allow them to profit from alcohol; casinos, gambling, and sports betting; tobacco; prescription pharmaceuticals; weapons, including firearms and ammunition; and adult entertainment products.

For most of the NCAA’s history, student-athletes were prohibited from earning compensation and making deals to profit from their fame gained in collegiate athletics. They relinquished these rights when signing onto college teams. That was the case until a few years ago when NCAA rule changes and laws allowed them to use their name, image, or likeness commercially.

The current NCAA rules regarding NIL state that in states with no oversight, such as New Hampshire, individual universities must write policies for their athletes to follow. In New Hampshire, student-athletes do not receive the same attention as the top football players at schools like Alabama, which budget millions of dollars for player compensation. However, the opportunity to sign deals and sponsorships using NIL is an important source of additional revenue for many athletes.

So far New Hampshire has not seen any cases of student-athletes signing lucrative deals with any of the industries that would be prohibited under the law. Moffett said it is a proactive measure to provide a statutory basis for future cases.

“The intent was to be preemptive and proactive because inevitably, there are all kinds of scenarios that are going to pop up and are popping up in terms of endorsement opportunities and there’s a need for some definition. Some people say we have too many laws, and why don’t we wait until we need a law?” Moffett said. “Again, my answer to that is to get some section of law in place with the start of addressing in a preemptive, proactive fashion, the inevitable issues that are going to come up in New Hampshire with athlete endorsements and commercialization.”

At the public hearing in the Commerce and Consumer Affairs Committee, Moffett testified explaining his purpose with the bill, and Rep. Adam Presa of Hillsborough, also a Republican, voiced his support for the bill.

Some potential amendments to the bill discussed included removing weapons and firearms from the limitations due to some shooting disciplines, such as “Rifle,” being an NCAA-sanctioned sport, according to Rep. John Potucek, a Republican member of the committee.

Lauren Banker, the University of New Hampshire’s senior director of government relations, and Allison Rich, UNH’s director of athletics, argued against the legislation for multiple reasons.

Rich explained that UNH already has policies in place for its athletes, as mandated by the NCAA. UNH recommends but does not require, legal representation, as would be mandated by if the bill became law.

Banker and Rich also argued the bill could harm the ability of colleges to recruit out-of-state talent because it would not allow institutions to provide athletes with NIL compensation directly.

Michael McCann, the director of the Sports and Entertainment Law Institute at the University of New Hampshire and a contributor for Sports Illustrated, said the national NIL landscape is changing and that the state law may be premature because it seeks to address something that’s still fluid.

“This is just a fast-moving topic,” he added.

In the case of smaller, private institutions, such as New England College, the stakes are not as high. NEC has a compliance director who handles NIL deals with students, which are dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Still, the reality is that these have not crossed any of the boundaries that this bill would regulate and the sums of compensation are still relatively small, according to Athletics Director Dave DeCew.

“We tend to try and lean on what the NCAA provides as the best way for us to navigate our tools in this area. I think that the idea of clarity and getting ahead of certain things at the legislative level, I can understand when there might be an appetite to do that, but I would tend to agree that we don’t want to necessarily create something too restrictive before it’s all been worked through,” he said. “There’s just so much that is still fluid about the NIL situation.”

Alexander Rapp can be reached at arapp@cmonitor.com