You Can Now Pay Your Favorite College Athlete To Stay In School
Crowdfunding has become the popular method of collecting a few funds from a lot of people for a cause that probably would otherwise never become popular. It has certainly changed some lives, as is evidenced by the most recent crowdfunding effort for Oklahoma SAE’s recently unemployed house cook. In this case, I believe it is a cause that everyone supports.
Crowdfunding has also expanded into some murky areas. One such realm is the payment of college athletes in order to encourage them to return to school. I’m not going to be the guy who pretends that a little cheddar may slip into a star athlete’s hands a short time before he is legally allowed to possess such cheese, but with a new site aimed at quite literally bribing athletes with large donations, a new ballgame has emerged.
The concept of FanAngel is simple. Fans have the ability to donate some change to their favorite athlete in what could turn out to be a fruitless attempt at “encouraging” him to stay in school. Should he choose to remain in school, the site will hold onto the donation and present it to the athlete once his eligibility has expired. After taking a 9 percent fee for itself, the site gives divides the rest like this: 80 percent to the athlete, 10 percent to his teammates, and 10 percent to charity.
The entire idea seems sketchy, and it could possibly be an NCAA team’s worst nightmare in development, but the site’s founder, Shawn Fojtik, claims everything is kosher.
From ESPN:
But Fojtik said his site steers clear of all NCAA guidelines.
“There’s no acceptance on the athlete’s part, and we aren’t specifically promoting any athletes,” he said. “We are using their name as anyone would as part of fair use.”
Fojtik acknowledged that he met with the NCAA and said he incorporated some of the ideas from that discussion, but the organization is not supportive of the model.
“We have a lot in common with them,” Fojtik said. “We want the same thing as them — for kids to stay in school, to end the one-and-dones or the ‘two-and-throughs.’ But we aren’t a constituent of theirs, so we’re not subject to their rules.”
Here is the ESPN video report on the new site.
It’s an interesting idea, but there isn’t a chance in hell this goes off without a hitch..
[via ESPN]
Loopholes. TFM
11 years ago at 9:47 pmI don’t get it. What’s the point if they don’t get the money until their eligibility has expired? This doesn’t solve the issue of wanting money NOW or needing money to pay for the things their stipends don’t cover while in school.
11 years ago at 10:59 pmIf they stay and get injured in this model, they’d still get paid. Less incentive to jump to NBA.
11 years ago at 11:14 pmIt’s not necessarily a great solution for every kid’s situation, but if the money gets big enough, it could be a game changer. There’s no cap, right? Boosters could freely and openly donate as much as they want, directly to the kid to get him to stay. Yeah he’ll have to wait for it, but what if it’s $20M/yr?
11 years ago at 11:17 pmIt seems unlikely that they will raise more money than they could make in the NFL or NBA let alone that they can’t access it until they are most likely already making money. Many of them declare early so that they can start supporting their families. Even if they stay and get hurt, that money won’t compare to the money they would’ve made had they just declared early. It’s better to get hurt while you’re getting paid for it where they’ll have more money to fall back on.
Also the way the money is divvied up is strange. I kind of understand wanting to share the wealth with teammates but are you going to divide that 10% among the 4 classes ahead of him and the 3 or 4 classes behind him of guys that would’ve at one time been on the roster with that guy? That’s a lot of people and not some of those people he probably barely even knew. Then there’s the 10% that goes to charity. First of all what charity or at least what kind of charities? I find this random and while I’m all for donating to charity, that’s not why people are donating their money and it seems totally unrelated to the purpose of the entire thing.
11 years ago at 3:22 amI’m not a tax attorney, but there are probably some tax implications. Further, if this is considered a trust, then he can lose out on things like financial aid if he/ she decides to attend graduate school. I am not really sure, but it ought to be researched.
11 years ago at 4:35 pm