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Giovanni the Podcaster Clarifies that He’s Not Asking for Money to Go to Temple
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A bit of a kerfuffle on the timeline Monday, when Giovanni Hamilton posted a series of tweets explaining that he is not enrolling at Temple in the fall.
You may recall back in January that Gio, the teenage Eagles superfan who suffers from a condition known as Schwartz-Jampel syndrome, told everyone that was he was accepted into the Klein College of Media and Communication, which is responsible for the proliferation of many fine young journalists in the Delaware Valley and beyond.
But due to monetary reasons, he’s holding off:
This was met with a variety of responses, some people wondering how they could help out, others suggesting alternative paths, like community college and then transferring in during year three. But as is usually the case on the internet, it went a little sideways with people accusing Gio of grifting for money, which he responded to in a series of follow ups:
Hey guys I thought I’d address this as there seems to be this narrative in the comments I’m up to no good vs just updating my community on my college path. I applied for Fasfa (sic). I got student loans capped at $5,000 for Out of state. I’m out of state tuition which means I pay more. I have never and will never ask for donations for my college tuition. Have a nice day sir.
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If you see donations set up for a college tuition for me it is a scam. It is not from me. I’ll work my butt of streaming to make it.
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I’m going to mute this thread guys. I’ve had so many people ask me when I was moving for school, I just provided an honest update as I always have. I never asked for help. I never asked for players to be tagged. I actually said I was going to work hard to go next year and explained my tuition being high because I’m out of state. There is a group on this app that will always hate me, still complain about me even though they are blocked so they make burners to look, to put it blunt: it’s weird to twist peoples words to fit your narrative of hatred. It’s no wonder they were waiting for this reality to set in to kick me when I am down. I’m going to be a bit more closed off in my personal life I share with you guys now. I got to protect my mental health. Love you guys.
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Today was the hardest day for me coming to the realization that I couldn’t go to Temple this fall. Social media made it so much worse by trying to twist my intentions and words. Like I said in my video I’m working hard this year on content creation and maybe I can go next year. I’m looking at community colleges too for this year. I just didn’t get that far yet. Today sucked and I wanted to go out with my friends to forget for a few hours but I sat there watching this app go crazy over something I never said or asked for. But I’ll try again tomorrow. I’m okay guys, just no more college updates here.
Temple’s website says the annual rate for in-state students is $18,864. Base tuition for out-of-state is $33,912. So if you’re on the typical four-year college plan, and coming from one of the 49 other states, Indiana in Gio’s case, that’s $135,648 before housing, food, books, and all of the other stuff that comes with it. Basically a full year of salary if you work a white collar job or two years of salary if you work a non-essential loser job, like editor of an irreverent sports blog.
Alternately, if he applied and was accepted into IU or Purdue, he’d be looking at $10,000 to $14,000 per year in tuition. It’s wild how much tuition still shifts on an in-state, out-of-state basis. Obviously he loves Philly and wants to get into media, hence the allure of Temple and Klein.
But back to the original message, there’s not some big, sweeping takeaway here. Social media giveth and it also taketh away. There are many people who have a lot of love for Gio and understand what the kid has been through, which includes a ton of surgeries since age 2 and all sorts of medical hardships along the way. On the other side, you have folks who think that being chronically online is detrimental for a variety of reasons, and gets into grifter and exploitation territory. That’s the basic explanation for why opinions are what they are when it comes to Gio.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com