College Football: NCAA suspends USF kicker for Youtube channel

The NCAA has ruled on another meaningless case, suspending Central Florida kicker Donald De La Haye for running his profitable Youtube channel.

Collegiate athletics is a full-time job. Between practice, school and actually playing the games there isn’t much free time available. Most college players can’t squeeze in a part-time job at a local restaurant like most students. The NCAA ruled that they couldn’t make money on the internet either.

Current UCF place kicker Donald De La Haye was suspended for the 2017 season for profits received from running his popular Youtube channel. De La Haye was warned earlier in the summer that the NCAA would be looking into his situation, but he wasn’t fazed.

He told the Orlando Sentinel that he fully intended to continue running his page, saying this:

"I’m not stopping for anybody. I’m going to upload regularly to this channel. I’m not stopping that. I’m not demonetizing. I refuse to. So it’s out of my hands now."

It looks like he’ll have more free time this fall to focus on his internet career. The NCAA announced that he would not be eligible because of that Youtube channel. De La Haye was stunned:

Not only does De La Haye forfeit his chances to play Division I football this season, he also has reportedly now fails to qualify for his athletic scholarship at UCF. All of this for a kid’s internet past time turned profitable business venture.

Further clarification came in the form of a statement from the NCAA:

Short story: making money off of Youtube is okay for a student athlete. De La Haye just can’t make money off of his representation as an athlete. A fine line indeed.

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The NCAA gets a lot of bad publicity. To be fair, they are asked to mediate and officiate a lot of messy situations. In this case they got it wrong. Dear NCAA, Youtube isn’t compromising the integrity of college football, you are.