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[QUOTE="texascpa, post: 2329749, member: 468"]
A gift is taxable to the donor, not the recipient.  In rare cases, the IRS can go after the recipient if the donor does not pay the taxes or the recipient declares they would pay the taxes.  That is the law.  It's a common misconception that if you receive money as a gift, you owe taxes on it.  That's not true.  My point on gifts was to clarify the misconception that the recipient (the player and the parents) would owe taxes on the $100K IF the IRS deemed the payment a gift from Adidas.  I don't believe the IRS would do that, but there was some conjecture from some posters that it might be considered that.

Another way to look at this is through inheritances.  Inheritances, by their very nature are gifts.  For Federal tax purposes, they are not taxable to the recipient, only the donor's estate.  The estate has a current lifetime $5.45M of exclusion on gifts.  So, if someone bequeathed an estate of $5M to you, it's plausible that neither they nor you would have to pay tax on it.  You can debate the merit of it, but that's the law.
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