While everyone brings up valid points, in the absence of an agreement stating otherwise, he likely owns the rights to the footage. But that's an issue that's been debated repeatedly on here and there's not always a clear cut answer legally or ethically.
But I doubt those "big hits" from local football games is worth a huge sum of money, so if he discusses it with the coach and school, and they're ok with it, he likely will have no issues with parents.
There are scores if not hundreds of sports team magazines produced weekly both in print and online that take snapshots and video of local sporting teams then resell those photos and videos to parents online. They recruit parents to shoot the photos and pay them a little something for shooting and a little portion of each photo or video sold. They don't get permission from teams, coaches, parents or otherwise. Nobody complains. In fact, parents eat it up because they can go online and see pics and video of their little whipper snapper in action. Nobody complains although the whole enterprise is clearly done for profit. Again, I doubt anybody is getting rich on this venture.
The only time rights owwnership has ever been an issue in my 25 years is when there's a substantial amount of money involved.
So as long as nothing unethical or inappropriate is being done with the images or video, there's little to fear, especially if you discuss it with the school and coach.
One more thing, schools routinely take photos and videos of sporting events, graduations, recitals etc. and resell the photos and videos to parents under the guise of "fundraising." When I was in school I played a lot of sports and every year we signed a waiver for a bunch of stuff, mainly injury related but there was also a release about photos and film (shows how old I am). That was 30 years ago so I bet most schools have kids sign waivers for stuff like that today as well. Almost all schools videotape games then share that video for teaching and scouting purposes, so that's why (at least back then) they needed the releases.
You could also offer to kick back 10 or 15% of what you make from selling the footage to the shool. That should make everyone happy.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
