Written by Dan Wolken at USA Today.com
In fewer than 24 hours, Donald De La Haye’s YouTube video titled “I lost my full DI scholarship because of my YouTube channel” had been viewed more than 153,000 times. It was 5 minutes, 39 seconds of raw emotion from a backup kicker at Central Florida none of us would have known about had NCAA rules not intervened this summer, threatening his eligibility for making money off his videos.
“Every time I step in that compliance building,” he said, voice quivering, “I hear nothing but bad news.”
Indeed, De La Haye will no longer play college football at UCF after he declined to accept a compromise with the NCAA on the monetization of his YouTube channel, thus rendering him ineligible.
To clarify media misreporting, UCF declared Donald De La Haye ineligible, not the NCAA.
— Stacey Osburn (@NCAAStacey) July 31, 2017
Though NCAA staffers tried to do some emergency spin in the wake of another public relations disaster, tweeting at reporters that it was the school and not Indianapolis that ruled him ineligible, it’s a distinction without a difference.
The issue here isn’t who ruled De La Haye ineligible, nor is it the way they sliced and diced the rule so that he could continue making videos — but only if the ones he made money off of didn’t reference anything about being a football player at UCF.
The problem here is that the NCAA has built an entire brand on the theme that “most of us will go pro in something other than sports.” And yet, when someone has the audacity to get a head start on that while in college, we have to strain it through so many bylaws and compliance interpretations that a kid at the end of a roster in the American Athletic Conference has to make a choice between his football scholarship and his slightly lucrative hobby.
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