Peyton Houston doesn’t have his driver’s license but will soon have his own trading card.
In the latest example of how much name, image and likeness (NIL) has forever changed sports, the 15-year-old Houston signed a multi-year “life-changing” deal with Leaf Trading Cards despite never starting a high school football game. The freshman from Evangel Christian Academy in Louisiana is Leaf’s boldest bet yet as it tries to corner what it believes could be the next big market in the trading card space.
“We’ve signed a lot of the top high school quarterbacks to deals and a lot of them have been exclusive,” said Josh Pankow, president of Leaf Trading Cards. “We’re really trying to lock up the next generation of stars that are all the high school kids.”
Leaf had already signed deals with five-star class of 2025 quarterbacks JuJu Lewis (the No. 16 overall recruit) and George MacIntyre (the No. 30 overall prospect in the country). But Pankow and Co. wanted to dive deeper into that space and utilized 247Sports’ rankings and coverage to search for younger prospects. Through that research and working with the Institute For Athletes (IFA) and Lionheart Sports Agency, which put together the deal, Leaf became interested in securing a deal with Houston, its youngest prospect yet.
The basic idea behind Leaf’s strategy is to make informed yet speculative bets on young quarterback prospects before they hit it big and make it to the NFL. Leaf is betting that hardcore fans will want to do the same by buying a Houston autographed card—expected to sell for $70—hoping that if he turns into a Patrick Mahomes or Josh Allen-type star, that card will one day be worth thousands.
“Quarterbacks drive the trading card marketplace more than anybody else,” said Howard Skall, IFA senior vice president of athlete marketing, who negotiated the deal alongside Doug Terfehr. “With the trend of NIL and the trickle down, not only through college but trying to look at top high school prospects, they were looking at the opportunity to partner with someone they saw an extreme amount of upside on the field and the opportunity to partner with a really great young man and great family excited them.”
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When the Houston family first heard about the potential Leaf deal, they were stunned.
“It took a few minutes before I realized he was serious,” said Naomi Harris, Peyton’s mother. “NIL was not something we thought about or had been thinking about. To even mention it, it blew my mind.”
While Houston already had scholarship offers from schools such as Texas A&M, Ole Miss and Colorado, his family had yet to consider that an NIL deal could be coming soon. Naomi Harris said before this deal, she viewed NIL as primarily a college sports thing rather than something even capable for her son at this stage. Shaun Houston, Peyton’s father, said the experience reminded him that for Peyton “those are all talents God has given him and has a purpose for him on this Earth.”
Peyton was similarly stunned, even thinking about the fact that a trading card with his face and name on it would be available for purchase in the coming weeks.
“Just knowing I have a card, it’s a blessing, honestly,” Peyton Houston said. “I can’t even fathom it right now.”
