UCF Kicker Donald De La Haye Ruled Ineligible For Making Money Off YouTube Videos

The University of Central Florida has deemed kicker Donald De La Haye ineligible to play after he continued to earn advertising revenue from posting YouTube videos.

UCF Kicker Donald De La Haye YouTube

The NCAA’s Stacey Osburn clarified it was UCF that suspended De La Haye, and not the association. However, Joe Kepner of WFTV Sports tweeted the university’s statement regarding their athletics department’s submission of a waiver to the NCAA. This waiver supposedly would have allowed the kicker to keep his playing eligibility status while continuing to monetize his videos as long as those clips did not make any reference to him as a football player.

The statement makes clear that the NCAA would not consider any college athlete who participated in this type of behavior to be eligible to continue playing, at least not as long as the athlete was using a monetized YouTube account to share videos. Furthermore, De La Haye did not accept the conditions of the waiver, which was granted on July 14. The UCF Knights thus suspended their kicker in order to avoid the consequences of having a player on their roster who was violating NCAA rules.

NCAA bylaw 12.4.4 addresses athlete self-employment.

The rule states an athlete “may establish his or her own business, provided the student-athlete’s name, photograph, appearance or athletics reputation are not used to promote the business.”

“Every time I step into that compliance building, I hear nothing but bad news,” De La Haye said in a video posted Monday night on YouTube. “I’m ruled ineligible because I refuse to de-monetize my videos, something that I’ve worked so hard for. Something that I have put blood, sweat and tears into. Something that I eat, sleep, breathe about. … and I get deemed ineligible to continue playing college sports because of it.”

De La Haye was a marketing major at UCF who began making the videos — which he now boasts 59 of — partly to document his daily life as a student athlete, but also to help his struggling family make ends meet. According to Iliana Limon Romero and Matt Murschel of the Orlando Sentinel, De La Haye’s YouTube channel “Deestroying”  has increased from 63,275 subscribers in June to 89,954 shortly after the university announced he was ineligible Monday.

The kicker responded to the news of his suspension and ineligibility in a series of Twitter posts on Monday afternoon in which he stated he did not intend to break the rules in any way.

“All I wanted was to keep inspiring and motivating others through my content,” De La Haye wrote in one tweet. “Didn’t know it would cost me my education.”

According to Romero and Murschel, a UFC compliance officer warned De La Haye in June that he was risking his status as an NCAA player by receiving money for his videos. The kicker met with the officer on June 18, and posted a video approximately one week afterwards saying, “I’m not stopping for anybody.”

Some could surely argue that giving college athletes scholarships counts as a form of payment, but the players themselves may not always see it that way.

De La Haye expressed his shock and frustration with his treatment by the NCAA in one of his videos, noting the hypocrisy of the association for making money off of him by not paying him but refusing him to earn his own revenue online.

“It was surprising. I feel like I’m owned by the NCAA. They can use my name and my likeness to make money off of me, but I can’t. I’m not out here selling autographs. I’m not boasting that I’m a UCF player. Any other YouTuber with the same amount of subscribers would make the same amount of money as me. It’s a senseless rule, in my opinion, especially in the age of social media.”

“If anything, I feel like I should be rewarded for what I’m doing, not punished,” he added. “I don’t want to toot my own horn, but I feel like I have a talent. I try to inspire people and to bring smiles to their faces.”

De La Haye also asked for donations and added a link to a GoFundMe account to one of his videos, explaining that even with all the money he earned, he still could not afford his full tuition because UCF took away his scholarship. “Please help out, even if its just $1!” the kicker wrote in the video caption.

Advocacy agencies such as the National College Players Association are supporting players, arguing they should be free to promote their brand and likeness with jeopardizing their chances to compete.

“He should have equal rights under the law and no one else on that campus is prevented from having success on YouTube and being compensated,” NCPA President Ramogi Huma told the Orlando Sentinel in June. “No other student on that campus is subjected to that restriction.”

UCF head coach Scott Frost said he supported De La Haye before the kicker refused to comply with the conditions of the waiver issue by the NCAA.

“Donald’s a member of our team. I think he’s working through with the issues with the NCAA right now. He’s a valuable member of our team and I hope it all works out for him,” Frost said. “We’re going to do everything we can to make it work as long as he can come to an agreement with the NCAA.”

De La Haye played in all 13 games with the Knights last season as a kickoff specialist. UCF posted a 6-7 record and reached the AutoNation Cure Bowl one season after finishing winless. He kicked off 73 times for 4,441 yards, averaging 60.8 yards per kick, and totaled 37 touchbacks.