“It’s different here.”

That’s been a theme of our (Indiana High School Athletic) Association over the course of the 2025-26 school year. As Commissioner, I believe it resonates with the passion and support our communities show for local high school sports. As a Hoosier, I believe it’s a sentiment baked into our collective DNA—it’s a level of passion and support we’re born with.

The idea of “It’s different here” goes deeper than our love of high school sports, though. It applies to what separates education-based athletics from other levels of amateur sports.

When the IHSAA was created—and honestly, for most of the past 100+ years—education-based athletics existed in a world where the definition of amateurism was pretty cut and dry. There wasn’t much room to misinterpret what amateurism meant, and there were even fewer opportunities for it to be called into question. Today, that’s not the case. And it certainly isn’t the world education-based athletics live in anymore.

Earlier this month, a new bylaw was passed by the IHSAA Board of Directors that allows for Indiana student-athletes to participate in Personal Branding Activities (or, as we call it, “PBA”). At its basic level, PBA provides a structure that allows student-athletes the opportunity to benefit independently from their school—that is, without using school branding or representing school-sponsored endorsements—while preserving their amateur status.

PBA creates a clear distinction between what is permissible in high school and the model that is present in college athletics—a model that, at the highest level, has removed amateurism and deprioritized education from its framework. Instead, the PBA rule is engineered to allow the IHSAA to protect the values of high school sports while adapting responsibly to a rapidly changing landscape.

As much as we wish it weren’t the case, the high school landscape is constantly reshaped by developments in college sports. More accurately, it’s reshaped by the expectations of parents who believe their children will one day be navigating the structure of high Division 1 college sports. As such, it makes it nearly impossible to talk about the introduction of PBA without comparing it to what exists in college. After all, that system—and the expectations it has created—is the driving force behind why the PBA rule is even needed.

However, I want to be crystal clear: while this is a new bylaw, and as such a technical “change” to IHSAA rules, PBA is not a change to high school athletics in Indiana. It does not indicate a change in the mission of education-based athletics. In fact, my sincere hope is that in creating proactive, thoughtful guidelines around PBA, the IHSAA can keep education in front of Hoosier high school sports.

After all, it’s the education taking place on the playing field that transforms our student-athletes. It’s the development of teamwork, the discovery of grit, and triumph of character over scores and records that ignites our Hoosier passion and draws our communities to the stands on Friday nights.

It’s the education that makes it different here.

I promise you this: we’ll do everything we can to keep it that way.

To being different,

Paul Neidig
IHSAA Commissioner