NBAFan93 wrote:LKN wrote:NBAFan93 wrote:
If someone will pay them a significant amount of money to do a car commercial, BECAUSE OF THEIR ABILITY TO PLAY A SPORT, yes - they kind of are. I mean they can try and argue they are just selected to do the role cause they are an actor on the side or just really good selling cars, but good luck with that if it goes to a committee or a program’s 501(c) status gets audited.
Remember when LeBron got in trouble for that loan to his mom for the Hummer - that wasn’t even the NCAA, but a high school league.
You are really confused here. That hummer had nothing to do with non-profit status or taxes. The controversy was over whether it violated ELIGIBILITY rules set by the OSHAA.
The only thing stopping kids from earning money from endorsements off the court are NCAA eligibility rules. There would be no impact on the NCAA or schools non-profit status unless the kids were using university owned trademarks. Obviously they would not be as the schools would not permit it (and that is not typically done for endorsements anyways).
The bolded is irrelevant and has nothing to do with the non-profit status of the NCAA or school. An audit would reflect nothing because the NCAA and school would not be involved in the student getting paid by a 3rd party in any way.
And really - you do realize companies like Nike manage to have contracts with conferences and schools and yet somehow they magically keep their non-profit status. Did you forget about Zion's shoe explosion already?
A non-profit can have a contract with a for profit company. It’s whether the athletes pros or if they are amateurs is what matters in the IRS.
The OSHAA eligibility thing all stemmed back to the same set of stuff that the NCAA does - amateur versus pro.
What in the world are you talking about? The IRS is not who determines pro/amateur status (nor do they care). The NCAA does that.
FFS - you do realize that professional athletes compete in the olympics without the USOC losing it's non-profit status right?
Where in the world are you getting this bizarre information?
The endorsement money would be paid to the athlete as part of a private 3rd party agreement... and the kid would absolutely have to pay tax on that income. However, that money would have nothing to do with the NCAA or school and would have no impact on their non-profit status.
You do realize that college coaches are paid millions of dollars AND can do endorsements right?
Stuff like this has been going on for years with no impact on non-profit status
https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/blog/threads_and_laces/2013/09/how-nike-funnels-money-football-coaches.htmlSeriously, where are you getting this information? The NCAA absolutely does set rules for tax-exempt organizations, but those rules have nothing to do with things like endorsement deals unrelated to the organization.
Again - these endorsement deals would not involve the NCAA or school in any fashion. Just like Dan Marino doing commercials had nothing to do with the Dolphins or the (at the time non-profit) NFL.