Athletes forced to make a choice: sports or their passion

2:41 PMIt’s a well-known fact that the NCAA is ruthless when it comes to shutting down any potential extra money its student-athletes might be making outside of their athletic endeavors. They’ve bastardized the concept of amateurism to the point of no return, creating a matrix of morality that allows them to penalize a student-athlete for daring to dream beyond the concept of a roster spot.

In the past week, two cases have highlighted this completely unfair setup.

You might already be familiar with Dylan and Dakota Gonzalez. The twins started their basketball careers at Kansas, transferred together to the University of Nevada Las Vegas and are singers. Because of what they look like, and the fact that Dylan used to date New Orleans Pelicans center Anthony Davis, the two are popular on the Instagram-adjacent sports media blog circuit.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BUAYccpFg8N/?taken-by=miss_dyl&hl=en

They decided to skip playing basketball during their senior years to pursue their music careers, which, for my money, are legit. Internet fame aside, these two are certainly talented enough to make an attempt at doing music for a living, no doubt about it. But the NCAA intoned that they were somehow using their “platform” as student-athletes to promote their endeavors. … Quick, name the last team to win the women’s college basketball Mountain West Conference title. Exactly. (It was Boise State, btw.)

The two recently did an interview with Slam magazine about what their lives are like now. It’s a very real look into how controlled you can feel as a student-athlete by the governing body, for doing nothing that would be considered illegal by any stretch. But God forbid we don’t protect the oh-so-important integrity of NCAA amateurism. What’s particularly disheartening is to hear about how the NCAA has effectively killed their love of basketball to an extent.

Moving down south to Orlando, Florida, there’s the case of Donald De La Haye. He’s the University of Central Florida’s kicker with his own YouTube channel. The content of his blog is quite literally videos of him doing things that are required of him as a member of the football team. He’s managed to make the mundane life of being a college kicker rather interesting, while also allowing himself a creative outlet. Now he’s under pressure to close the account because the NCAA told him, according to Deadspin, it “make[s] it obvious that I’m a student-athlete.”

That logic is so laughably ridiculous it’s almost bizarre. So you can’t do activities that are outside of the scope of your athletic scholarship, but you also can’t highlight the fact that you are a student-athlete? What are they supposed to do, just sit in a dark room until it’s time to practice and play?

According to the NCAA core values, as listed on its website, part of its goal is to create “an inclusive culture that fosters equitable participation for student-athletes and career opportunities for coaches and administrators from diverse backgrounds.”

In short, as evidenced by the cases of the Gonzalez twins and De La Haye — that’s a lie.