Boise State can help Antoine Turner

Incoming recruit Antoine Turner, who is currently homeless, is allowed to receive immediate assistance from Boise State after the NCAA granted a waiver request Wednesday.

After Boise State's request last night, the school may provide immediate assistance to football student-athlete Antoine Turner.

- NCAA (@NCAA) May 14, 2014Turner told KTVB-TV in Boise that he has been living at a motel and in his girlfriend's car and even in the past on park benches due to various financial and family issues.

After the television story aired, Boise State's compliance department warned boosters it would be an NCAA violation for them to provide any financial assistance to Turner.

Under the waiver, the 6-foot-3, 280-pound defensive end can receive -- among other items -- room and board from Boise State because he's now allowed on campus. Originally, he was scheduled to arrive for summer school.

Turner, who grew up in New Orleans, told KTVB he lost his mother to cancer when he was 4, had a strained relationship with his father and lost an uncle during Hurricane Katrina.

After that, he told the station, he ran drugs for gang members in the Lower Ninth Ward, until they realized he was playing sports during his senior year and "gave me a pass."

"I was playing football and I wasn't having to go home until late at night. That kept me out of the streets," he told KTVB. "... They may be thugs and they may be gangsters, but they actually cared. They kind of like gave me a pass."

Turner told KTVB that he then attended Fullerton Junior College in California, where he says he slept on park benches because he had nowhere to stay until the family of his girlfriend took him in. He was forced out six weeks ago because of government subsidized housing regulations.

He said he's been either sleeping at a motel or in his girlfriend's car in Fullerton since.