Donald De La Haye, a University of Central Florida kicker, has been ruled ineligible to play for his football team after he refused a waiver from the NCAA that would have allowed him to continue to make advertising money for his YouTube videos if they did not include athletics, the Orlando Sentinel reported Monday.
The majority of De La Haye's 59 videos covered his life as a student-athlete at UCF and built his subscriber base to more than 89,900 before he was ruled ineligible, the Orlando Sentinel reported.
The university representative told the kicker in early June that he was putting his athletic scholarship and eligibility in jeopardy by receiving advertising money for his videos, per the newspaper. De La Haye went on his YouTube channel to defy the warning and said he would keep uploading new videos.
The NCAA bylaw addressing student self-employee says that a student-athlete can "establish his or her own business, provided the student-athlete's name, photograph, appearance or athletics reputation are not used to promote the business," the Sentinel noted.
The situation came to a head Monday when the UCF athletic department released a statement announcing De La Haye was ineligible, WFTV said in a tweet.
The NCAA stressed in its own Twitter post that De Lay Haye could have continued to play football if he would have kept athletics out of his videos.
De La Haye issued his own tweet and video on Monday, expressing disappointment about the decision.
"Every time I step into that compliance building, I hear nothing but bad news," De La Haye said in a video posted Monday. "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."
Ramogi Huma, president of student-athlete advocacy group National College Players Association, told The Associated Press that he believed UCF and the NCAA are in violation of antitrust law for not allowing De La Haye to profit from his likeness and image.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.