Even though he isn’t playing on Sundays anymore, former NFL quarterback Matt Leinart is still trying to give back to the community in California, but he may have run afoul with some things involving his flag football league.
Apparently, Leinart and his foundation found a way to skirt around paying thousands of dollars to use local fields by claiming to be a nonprofit organization despite the league being for profit.
Here are the details from ProFootballTalk:
According to Scott M. Reid of the Orange County Register, Leinart’s flag football league used his foundation to gain access and special rates to sports fields that wouldn’t have been available to the operation.
Per the report, the Matt Leinart Flag Football League registered as a non-profit group, avoiding “tens of thousands of dollars” through reduced fees for using the fields. Reid explains that, in one three-month period alone, the league’s use of the non-profit status allowed it to save almost $50,000.
Leinart runs youth flag football leagues in Irvine, Newport Beach/Costa Mesa, and South County. It costs $170 per player to participate.
Leinart’s brother, Ryan, essentially admits that Leinart borrowed the non-profit status of the foundation for the for-profit flag football league.
“What we found is that most cities require a [non-profit status] in order to rent their fields,” Ryan Leinart told Reid. “We talked with our legal counsel and were advised that it was OK to proceed with the foundation lending its non-profit status to the Matt Leinart Flag Football League. Because the foundation’s mission is to provide opportunities for youth to get involved in sports, we felt that by using our non-profit status in this manner, we were fulfilling our mission.”
This doesn’t look great at all for Leinart. It most certainly looks like he and his organization tried to get out of paying several fees to use the fields that otherwise they wouldn’t be able to use if they were not labeled a nonprofit organization.
With this coming to light, I willing to bet that the county or whoever owns the fields to end up getting that money one way or the other and that Leinart and his league will be forced to look for another way to continue playing.
