A Louisville Student Won $38,000 After Hitting A Half Court Shot...Before Having It Stripped From Him Because He Played High School Ball

A Louisville student hit a half-court shot, but won't get his $38,000 because of the fine print. pic.twitter.com/zstYmROVuI

— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) February 27, 2017

"Uproxx-  “It is a huge bummer as I am an out-of-state student,” Logsdon told the Courier-Journal in an email Friday. “It would have went a long way to paying off student loans and anything in that manner. It was still an awesome experience and something I’ll never forget. Very bittersweet though.”

A Louisville athletics spokesman clarified that Logsdon won’t win the big prize because the group that administers this contest has a number of really specific requirements. He also said that the athletic department is working with Logsdon so he gets something out of these experience. You can probably assume that his prize will be worth less than $38,000, though.

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Well, that's one way to protect a promotional investment. Make the feat extremely implausible for even the most experienced of athlete and then dwindle the pool of people tasked with completing it down to those that have never made into the final two during a game of 'Knockout'. Tough to really hate this move as someone the realizes that good marketing is all about making shit sound way better than it actually is. Maybe the pre-pubescent, blissfully ignorant version of myself that thought 'Score-O' victors actually won a car instead of getting "gifted" a limited one year lease would be tricked into thinking that the companies who sponsor these fan interactions do so without covering their own ass. Adult me, however, has seen far too many suspiciously "out-of-place" (I think that PC terminology accurately covers the old, fat, and dorky) fans toss up embarrassing attempts to not realize that the "random selection" responsible was as biased as the Presidential polls. So while I do think it's a total pussy move not to allow former high school hoopers to try their hand at something that would require precise timing and a hell of a lot of luck from anyone not named Steph Curry, I'm aware that most good advertisements are a castrated version of what they appear to be to the outside world.

That's why I don't really have a problem with them vetting the potential participants, but I do have a problem failing to uphold their end of the bargain when they do a shitty job of vetting potential participants. Pretty shady of Jackson Logsdon to lie about his average athletic past, but it's not his job to shed light on the truth before he steps on the court in front of thousands of people and puts that average athletic past to a profitable use. I think we need to apply college rules here, and they are - to my extremely intoxicated recollection - that if someone sneaks beers past security they are allowed to drink them freely and if a student lies his way on to the court then everything that happens after should count in the court of law. I'm going to need to get a better look at the fine print, because I didn't go to grad school but I do know that - litigiously speaking - a verbal contract is about as useful as tits on a bull.