A new Wyoming law slammed the door on name, image and likeness deals for high school athletes this year, but a group of Cheyenne boosters has found a way to keep helping kids — by skipping the NIL framework entirely and writing checks for gear.
The effort is being led in part by Jeff Teasley and Bryan Pedersen, two Cheyenne dads whose sons were recruited to play college football from Central High School.
Both told Cowboy State Daily they are pooling resources for rival Cheyenne South High School because that's where the need is.
A 2001 graduate of Central, Teasley went on to play college football at Black Hills State University in South Dakota. Back then, he said, the recruiting process moved through high school coaches who passed film along to college programs.
"The landscape has changed significantly," Teasley said.
He watched that change up close with his son Austin, a Central senior who is headed to Colgate University in New York to play wide receiver. Getting there, Teasley said, was "almost a full-time job" for the family.
"They have work, if they work. They have volunteer time, if they volunteer," Teasley said of high school athletes. "They go to school all day, they got their practices after school, and then it's eating a quick dinner and trying to get your homework done and then going to bed and then getting up and doing Groundhog Day all over again tomorrow."
Wyoming, he added, is "very, very hard to get recruited out of," in part because college coaches question the level of in-state competition and weather limits year-round play in sports like golf, softball and soccer.
NIL Ban
The new state law landed badly with Teasley, who said he had been hoping Wyoming would join the wave of states permitting high school NIL.
"I was kind of disappointed, for sure," Teasley said.
A national investigation by the University of Maryland's Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism and Howard Center for Investigative Journalism found that at least 41 states plus Washington, D.C., allow high school NIL deals, as Cowboy State Daily previously reported.
The policy debate, Teasley said, has not caught up with how the broader college sports system actually operates.
"This is 2026. The NCAA is not even amateur anymore," he said. "I mean, from what we've seen with NIL money and what we've seen with the portal and everything else."
Teasley would rather see student athletes able to swap a part-time job with a small sponsorship so they can focus on school and sports.
"If they could replace that money that they have to get by going out and asking the community for some sponsorship or whatever it is to help them, why wouldn't we want to do that?” he said. “It just doesn't make sense to me.”
Cleat Drop
Among the sea of faces circulating through the halls of Wyoming’s high schools, there are undercover athletes and other students with hidden talents who aren’t developing them because when school’s over, their work days begin.
"There's some kid at South's who's just, you know, a phenomenon,” said Pedersen. “But isn't playing sports because they have to get a job to help pay bills."
Pedersen is a former Wyoming legislator who said he spent the past five years working with the Wyoming High School Activities Association on a possible NIL framework.
When the Legislature shut that path down, he pivoted toward Cheyenne South High School and its football team.
The new plan: outfit the entire Cheyenne South team with cleats ahead of summer camps and seven-on-seven tournaments. The cleats are coming from Caddix, a brand Pedersen said is the official cleat of the U.S. Olympic lacrosse team.
According to a Caddix product sheet, the cleats use a feature called SmartStuds that "flex and release under load, reducing the rotational force on the knees and ankles." The company markets the line under the tagline “cleats for your knees."
"If you can get over the hump of at least having to buy, you know, cleats can be $150, $200," Pedersen said. "And if you can at least get over that, we can start to get into the team."
A presentation event is being planned for May at Cheyenne South, with sponsors, coaches and players gathering for a barbecue, according to Pedersen. He estimated the giveaway will reach 60 to 70 players.
Teasley confirmed the need is real.
“They don't have any. They're out there playing in tennis shoes,” he said. "At least have the bare minimum of the standard operating equipment to do the job, right?"
NIL Ban
Like Teasley, Pedersen is frustrated by the Legislature's decision to write the NIL prohibition into state law and block access to financial opportunities for Wyoming athletes.
His oldest son, he said, sent roughly 800 emails during his recruiting push, which produced seven visits and three scholarship offers.
A modest NIL income in high school could free up time and help athletes pay for the social media and travel costs that increasingly drive recruiting, Pedersen argued.
Senate File 53, Keeping Amateurism in High School Athletics, was carried by Sen. Gary Crum, R-Laramie, a former University of Wyoming offensive lineman.
The bill writes amateurism requirements into state statute for any student competing in a sport sanctioned by the Wyoming High School Activities Association.
"This bill is about keeping amateurism in high school athletics," Crum told the Senate Education Committee in February. "It's to keep professionalism out. As we know, professionalism has hit college sports through what is called NIL."
His stated concern when introducing the legislation was the prospect of boosters in larger Wyoming towns paying athletes from smaller communities to transfer schools.
That fear, Pedersen said, doesn't match what is actually happening in Cheyenne, where two Central dads are spending their own money to put cleats on the feet of rival South players.
"I just don't think that the boogeyman's out there," Pedersen said.
David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.
