The University of Hawaii Rainbow Warriors football team has offered a scholarship to a fifth grader, although this is not the first time that someone so young has been offered a football scholarship. The University of Central Florida (Ucf) has requested that one of their players stop making money off of YouTube. Finally, Oklahoma State and Mike Gundy agreed to a contract extension.
Hawaii's scholarship offer
Titan Lacaden, an 11-year-old quarterback who is in fifth grade, shared the news on Twitter. He said that he received a verbal offer from Hawaii head coach Nick Rolovich.
Lacaden is from Kapolei, Hawaii and his family is familiar with Rolovich. Lacaden's older brother Jake was a linebacker at Nevada when Rolovich was the offensive coordinator there. His father Frank works with the All Black Crusaders, who travel around Hawaii playing flag and tackle football with kids between 4 and 14. The team was at the University of Hawaii's football camp on Saturday, where Frank Lacaden and Rolovich met a few days prior to this news breaking.
UCF and YouTube
UCF backup kicker Donald De La Haye has a pretty popular YouTube following, as his channel 'Deestroying' has 56 thousand subscribers. However, in his latest video called 'Quit College Sports or Quit YouTube' De La Haye says that the school has asked him to quit making money off of his videos.
They say he has to do this in order for him to keep his amateur status. A source familiar with the situation says that the NCAA is not involved and that UCF has not given De La Haye any kind of ultimatum.
He has met with the compliance staff at UCF and they agreed to help work towards a solution with him. This issue here is the NCAA's 12.4.4 bylaw, which says that an athlete cannot use their name, picture, appearance or athletic reputation to promote their own business.
Since De La Haye's video centers around his time as a UCF football player and his videos are monetized, he is in violation of this.
Gundy's contract extension
Oklahoma State and head football coach Mike Gundy have agreed to a five-year contract extension that has annual automatic rollovers. Gundy will now earn $300,000 more in 2017 and get increases of $125,000 for each year of the contract.
He has been the head coach at Oklahoma State since 2005, the longest tenured coach in program history. In his time at the school he is 104-50 (.675%), giving him the most wins of any coach with the team and is also 63-39 (.617%) in Big 12 play. He led the team to their only Big 12 championship in 2011 and has taken them to 11 bowl games, going 7-4.
