Kyle Guy.Photo: Michael Hickey/Gett
University of Virginia star Kyle Guy ran into a little trouble after hiswedding registrybegan circulating online following his team’sadvancement to the Final Four.
Guy — who has beenengagedto his longtime love Alexa Jenkins since last February — first brought attention to his wedding registry drama in a since-deleted Tweet on Wednesday.
“Hope you weren’t planning on buying anything off there bc ncaa compliance said it was a violation so i had to make it to where only i can see it,” he wrote, according to theWashington Post. The couple’s Crate & Barrel registry was previously public, theRichmond Times-Dispatchreported.
The following day, Guy addressed the news during an open locker room session, telling reporters that the “NCAA said it was illegal.”
“Yeah, that was crazy to me that that’s illegal because that’s what a registry’s for,” he said, according to theWashington Post.“Yeah, NCAA said it was illegal, so I’m not going to argue with it right now. I’m going to try to win a national championship, and then we’ll open that book.”
Although college sports are a big deal across the country, the NCAA stipulates that its student-athletes cannot be paid.
According to their website, the rule is in play in order to “ensure integrity and fair playamong NCAA schools and a level playing field.”
However, according to NCAA president Mark Emmert, their organization has no problem with athletes having wedding registries — and they never told Guy to take his registry down.
“What we know right now is that nobody in the NCAA said anything of the sort. We don’t know what the source of that information was, whether it came from the institution or not. It’s certainly not the case that that’s a violation of NCAA rules,” he told reporters on Thursday, at a Final Four news conference, according toESPN. “We allow people to have all the usual and accustomed gifts among families and friends at all holidays and weddings of the sort. There’s not a prohibition against that.”
Emmert went on to tell reporters that the NCAA had reached out to UVA “to try to find out what transpired there.”
The NCAA did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
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Joe Kinsey, founder of the website, went on to receive a cease and desist letter from UVA’s associate director of compliance, according to theWashington Post.
“The University is requesting that you immediately remove the wedding registry link. The receipt of items from the registry could constitute an impermissible extra benefit,” read the letter, according to thePost. “By posting these items, you are jeopardizing the student-athlete’s eligibility for competition.”
He went on to tell thePost, he thought including the wedding registry in the post “was funny” and never meant to get “Kyle in trouble.”
In a statement to PEOPLE, Virginia’s assistant AD for public relations says they took action “to help ensure there would be no issues” with Kyle’s eligibility to continue being a student-athlete.
UVA will face off against Purdue on Saturday to see which team will advance to the NCAA final.
source: people.com
