As we sit here the NCAA gets another issue so terribly wrong, it shows how incapable of changing with the times and who’s rules are stuck in the stone age. To prove my point, I’m not talking about the University of North Carolina case, or Baylor, or Ole Miss. No, I’m talking about Donald De La Haye. I am not sure if you guys know who Mr. De La Haye is, but he is a punter for the University of Central Florida. Well, to be completely honest, I now have to say FORMER punter for UCF.
Now, if you are wondering what a punter from the AAC did to stop playing football you wouldn’t be the only one. Well, Mr. De La Haye has a YouTube channel, and he is so popular on that channel, that he receives money from sponsors to maintain that channel. Mr. De La Haye’s violation seems to be that he is making money of HIS likeness while he is playing college football (even though he was making money through this channel before he started playing college football).
That’s right, the NCAA bylaw 12.4.4 says that a student is not allowed to use his name, photograph, appearance, or athletics reputation to promote the business.” You should go and search for the video that Mr. De La Haye posted about this, it is amazing! So, now the NCAA is dictating what student athletes can do with their own likeness. While schools, conferences, and the NCAA itself rakes in BILLIONS on the likeness and athletic reputation of these same athletes!
The NCAA released a statement today stating that they never stated that what Mr. De La Haye was doing was not a violation, and that he could have maintained the channel and kept making money as long as he separated out the athletic videos and kept that non-athletic videos. So, basically what the NCAA is saying, is that WE can make money off of your athletic accomplishments, but YOU BETTER NOT!
This is just another way that the NCAA is broken. The NCAA has not evolved with the technological times and the fact that they have to grant a waiver to a player who is making money legally by posting on YouTube just proves it! The whole system needs to be blown up and restarted! I understand that there is an actual debate that needs to take place about how to compensate athletes (male and female, revenue and non-revenue sports).
They need to look at how they handle institutional cover-ups of sexual assaults, offering fake classes to students and providing escorts to college recruits. We need to seriously look at all of these issues. The NCAA does a poor job of keeping up with the times and still views college athletics as if we are all living in the 1970’s. The NCAA is incapable of being agile enough to keep up with the times. It has proven that they cannot enforce their own rules and are a mockery. This is just another example, in the long line of examples, that the NCAA needs to be blown up and reconstituted.
