A quick overview for those who don’t know what’s going on. Donald De La Haye is a kicker at UCF. In his free time, he makes funny YouTube videos. Those YouTube videos gained him a following of 50,000 subscribers. De La Haye started making money off those videos like any smart guy would/should. In June, the Soviet Union NCAA noticed De La Haye’s success on YouTube and told him he had to stop monetizing his videos or he would soon become ineligible for the 2017 season .

Now to yesterday’s ruling:

Orlando Sentinel-UCF kicker Donald De La Haye has been ruled ineligible after continuing to receive advertising money for his YouTube videos, the school announced Monday.

Knights coach Scott Frost said last week during the start of preseason camp De La Haye was a member of the team and the UCF Athletics Association worked to seek an NCAA waiver that would allow De La Haye to keep posting YouTube videos while competing for the Knights.

De La Haye and NCAA officials, however, could not reach an agreement that would keep him in the field. Once De La Haye declined the NCAA’s waiver terms, UCF suspended him to avoid repercussions for working with a player the NCAA was likely to later rule ineligible.

De La Haye took to Twitter and YouTube to address the news:

As you probably noticed, it’s not the NCAA who ruled him ineligible, but instead UCF. Any person with a brain will realize that happened because of the NCAA rules, but the NCAA took this as an opportunity to try to get out of this as the good guys:

I almost hurt my eyes as I rolled them when I read this statement from the NCAA.

I want to emphasize the part of this statement that reads “De La Haye decided he did not want to separate his athletically-related videos from non-athletic ones he could monetize which was outlined in the waiver for him to maintain eligibility.” Get the fuck out of here NCAA. If anybody has visited De La Haye’s channel they will notice 75% of his videos have directly to do with athletics. So, asking De La Haye to stop making athletic videos is as ridiculous as asking McDonald’s to stop making hamburgers. Yeah, they do other stuff but their entire brand is based on hamburgers. If you are going to ruin a kids life for being ambitious, don’t run away from it and play the good guy.

De La Haye has started a GoFundMe because his ineligibility means he will lose his scholarship:

Not that we need another one, but this is example 90,432 of the NCAA being the absolute worst. If you look at the NCAA on a very basic level you could say the NCAA’s sole purpose is to make sure that their football and basketball athletes make no money off of their talents. A huge part of their organization is making sure those athletes aren’t receiving “improper benefits.”

What are those “improper benefits?” Well, improper benefits in NCAA lingo are what other people would call compensation in a capitalistic society. De La Haye should be compensated for how great his YouTube videos with advertisements posted before/during his videos. Saquon Barkley should be able to appear and be compensated for a commercial from a local pizza joint in Happy Valley. Barkley and De La Haye aren’t able to do that and still play football at their respective schools. The NCAA limits their earning potential as a man in America.

But don’t worry, the NCAA will benefit off of those same athletes all they want. They’ll sign 10.8 BILLION DOLLAR deals for the NCAA tournament, which wouldn’t be possible if these athletes didn’t exist, and pay their athletes a grand total of zero dollars and zero cents. Then while you are watching that tournament, they’ll shove this hilariously ironic commercial down your throat:

The tag line at the end of that commercial should’ve been “Prioritizing academics, well-being, & fairn…lol, we couldn’t even complete this sentence without laughing.” Then end it with their new logo:

P.S. I should give the NCAA credit on coming down so hard on Bayl….oh wait, nevermind.

P.S.S. That being said, great job by the NCAA on sending a message to UNC after they allowed their athletes to take fake classes for yea…..oh wait, nevermind again.

Blog by Intern Jack