Odell Beckham Jr. appeared to hand out cash to LSU Tigers football players after they won the College Football Playoff national championship game. But was the money real? We now have an answer ... kind of.
What happened: Beckham Jr. handed out wads of cash to players after the national championship game.
- The university released a statement Wednesday saying it was aware of a video showing Beckham Jr. giving out “apparent cash.” LSU said it was contacting the NCAA and SEC about the situation.
- LSU statement (via ESPN):
“We are aware of the situation regarding Odell Beckham Jr. interacting with LSU student-athletes and others unaffiliated with the team following the championship game Monday night,” the LSU statement said. “Initial information suggested bills that were exchanged were novelty bills. Information and footage reviewed since shows apparent cash may have also been given to LSU student-athletes.
”We were in contact with the NCAA and the SEC immediately upon learning of this situation in which some of our student-athletes may have been placed in a compromising position. We are working with our student-athletes, the NCAA and the SEC in order to rectify the situation.”
- LSU quarterback Joe Burrow told “Pardon My Take” podcast that the money was real.
- Burrow: “I’m not a student-athlete anymore, so I can say yeah.”
Violations: According to ESPN, Beckham Jr. handing out real money would be a violation of NCAA bylaws.
The point: Beckham Jr. — regardless of if the money is real or not — had a plan with the decision to hand out cash at the end of the game. He wanted attention and to bring light to the issue of paying student athletes, according to Sports Illustrated.
- Per Sports Illustrated:
“Beckham’s provocative move tapped into the values of a large segment of sports fans, journalists, public figures and other NCAA critics. They find it hypocritical that college coaches can earn millions of dollars a year and universities can build multimillion-dollar stadiums, arenas and other sports facilities when the labor — the student-athletes — are denied compensation for their unique talents as well as for their commercially marketable names, images and likenesses. The fact that elite college football and basketball players generate the very entertainment that attracts billion-dollar TV deals and lucrative apparel and merchandise contracts is essentially dismissed as irrelevant under amateurism. Players are limited to reimbursement for tuition, housing, books, cost of attendance and other narrowly defined categories of education-related expenses.”