The Ohio State student who won free tuition for a year last week during a basketball halftime contest failed to complete all the shots in the required 30 seconds.

Austin Hylander, a freshman, won the prize at an OSU women’s basketball game on Jan. 28. To win, a contestant has to sink a layup, foul shot, 3-point shot and a half-court shot in 30 seconds.

The YouTube video posted by Ohio State athletics showed that it took Hylander 37 seconds to complete all four shots, Lantern multimedia editor Andy Gottesman said. He found out when he received the video from ohiostatebuckeyes.com and watched it before uploading it to www.thelantern.com.

“As I was watching it, it was taking a surprisingly long time for him to make the baskets,” Gottesman said. “I went back and timed it and found it took him 37 seconds from the first shot to the last shot.”

No one noticed at the time and the people running the contest declared Hylander a winner. The Athletic Department had been running the contest for four years and until Hylander, no one had
ever won it.

Gottesman contacted the athletic department Monday, and within hours the video of the event that had been posted on YouTube was taken down. Now, there is just a 7-second version of Hylander’s feat on YouTube.

“We aren’t allowed to talk about it,” said Carrie Snyder, assistant director of Fan Experience and Promotions for OSU athletics. No one has explained why the video has been re-edited.

A judgment call was made to give Hylander the money anyway, said Andrew Kossoff, general manager for IMG College. IMG is a sales agent for OSU athletics and works with sponsors, such as Big Lots, who sponsored the tuition prize.

“We made them aware [of the time issue] after you all had shared it with us,” Kossoff said. “We want to protect the integrity [of the contest], but we will still reward the student the tuition.”

Hylander was not informed he took longer than the required time.

“They had a shot clock running, but obviously I wasn’t paying attention to that,” he said. “People told me after I was done I had like 3 seconds left.”

He isn’t phased at all by the news.

“It still feels amazing — it’s an awesome feeling,” he said.
“Everybody back home knows. It’s the talk of the town.”

Hylander will be awarded his tuition prize by Big Lots and OSU athletics at a future basketball game.

“We’re working with fan experience to see which game we can award the prize,” Kossoff said.