Source: https://law.georgia.gov/opinion/2004-1-0
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 05:02:28+00:00

Document:
Legal entities and individuals who seek to obtain collegiate athletic scholarships for high school athletes do not fall under the provisions of O.C.G.A. § 20 2 317 and 20 2 318 or the 2003 amendments to Chapter 4A of Title 43.
You have requested advice on whether companies or individuals who seek to obtain athletic scholarships for high school athletes fall under the provisions of H.B. 95 and H.B. 194, which were passed during the 2003 session of the General Assembly and signed into law by the Governor. For the reasons discussed below, they do not.
Code sections 20 2 317 and 20 2 318, enacted at 2003 Ga. Laws 707, § 1 (H.B. 95), expressly apply to all legal entities and individuals, except immediate family members. 2003 Ga. Laws 707; see O.C.G.A. §§ 20 2 317(a)(1) (Supp. 2003) (definition of “immediate family member”); 20 2 317(a)(2) (definition of “person”); 20 2 317(c)(4) (Supp. 2003) (exclusion of immediate family members); 20 3 318(a) (identical definitions). Code section 20 2 317 (Supp. 2003) prevents any person, as defined above, from giving or offering anything of value to “induce, encourage or reward [a] student-athlete’s application, enrollment, or attendance” at a postsecondary school or to “induce, encourage, or reward [a] student athlete’s participation in an intercollegiate” event or program. O.C.G.A. § 20 2 317(b)(1) and (2) (Supp. 2003). A violation of its provisions is a misdemeanor of a high and aggravated nature. O.C.G.A. § 20 2 317(d) (Supp. 2003). Nonetheless, it excludes from its scope “[g]rants-in-aid or other full or partial scholarships awarded to a student-athlete or administered by an institution of postsecondary education.” O.C.G.A. § 20 2 317(c)(3) (Supp. 2003). Thus, it expressly withdraws from its ambit the subject of your question: scholarships for high school athletes. Cf. Slakman v. Continental Cas. Co., 277 Ga. 189, 191 (2003) (“fundamental rules of statutory construction . . . require [the courts] to construe a statute according to its terms, to give words their plain and ordinary meaning, and to avoid a construction that makes some language mere surplusage”).
Therefore, it is my unofficial opinion that legal entities and individuals who seek to obtain collegiate athletic scholarships for high school athletes do not fall under the provisions of O.C.G.A. §§ 20 2 317 and 20 2 318 or the 2003 amendments to Chapter 4A of Title 43.
1 There is one potential exception: where an athlete agent furnishes a scholarship to a student athlete prior to, and as an inducement for, entering into an agency contract. Current O.C.G.A. § 43 4A 14(a)(2) (Supp. 2003) prohibits athlete agents from “[f]urnish[ing] anything of value to a student athlete before the student athlete enters into the agency contract” as an inducement to enter into an agency contract. Merely obtaining a scholarship from an unrelated third party for the scholar athlete, however, likely does not qualify as “furnishing” by the agent, because in this situation the inducement did not come from the agent.

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