Stanford cornerback Malik Antoine sat in his Baton Rouge, Louisiana, backyard during the Cardinal's September bye week, confused and crushed.

Devastation surrounded the dazed freshman: The waters of a massive August flood had receded, but Antoine's childhood home sat ruined -- molded, muddy, and dilapidated from the 5 1/2 feet of water that had invaded just a few weeks earlier.

"That backyard is where I developed all my football skills," Antoine said. "My dad and grandpa coached me there. My little brother filmed me there. I remembered all the lateral drills and jump ropes I did from sunup to sundown in that backyard. To see it all ruined, that hurt."

Earlier that summer, Antoine had said goodbye to his childhood home on much more joyous terms. Everything was perfectly intact when he left to enroll and begin playing football at Stanford.

But disaster struck Louisiana in mid-August, just as Antoine was in the thick of his first training camp. Rainfall in parts of the state hit 1-in-1,000-year severity -- an unnamed storm produced three times as much rain as Hurricane Katrina -- creating what Gov. John Bel Edwards called a "historic, unprecedented flooding event."

Antoine was over 2,000 miles away from the deluge, but his family was at ground zero.

"We went outside and water was just slowly coming down the road," Karen Thomas, Malik's mother, remembered. "We evacuated, and we had to get a boat to check on the house two days later. It was devastating. Furniture was floating in the house -- why was the couch in the bedroom? [Louisiana] is known for its swamps, so there was a lot of mud and guck -- it was really sewage water. The smell was horrible."

Antoine's parents chose to temporarily withhold news of the devastation from their son so that he could remain focused on his adaptation to college. But social media made a true sequester impossible; Antoine learned of the flooding through Twitter, and he said he felt a punch to the stomach when his parents relayed details over the phone a day later.

"That's when the emotional side hit me," Antoine said.

But the true shock hit him upon his return visit during the bye week.

"That's when Malik really saw it," Thomas said. "Because he didn't realize how bad it was. The whole neighborhood is gone. Nobody is back home yet. It's a ghost town. It's like Katrina: People just never come back. It looks like a war zone, a third-world country -- and he just broke down."

Like thousands of other Louisianans, Antoine's family didn't have flood insurance.

"Insurance can rebuild you," Stanford's director of football relations Mike Eubanks said. "But that's not the case here. They're really left with nothing."

There is an exception outlined by NCAA bylaw 16.11.1.7-(g) which states that a student-athlete's image and likeness can be used to raise money if "extreme circumstances (e.g., life-threatening illness, natural disaster) should be extraordinary in the result of events beyond the student-athlete's control."

So Stanford compliance director Lorne Robertson -- who, as a former employee of Tulane University in New Orleans, was familiar with the devastation that flooding can cause -- sprung into action. He began meticulous correspondence with the Pac-12 office in early September to see if Antoine's family could raise money within the NCAA's rules.

There was precedent: Recently, a GoFundMe campaign was established for Colorado State basketball player Emmanuel Omogbo, whose family died in a house fire last January.

Stanford was able to help Antoine fly home over the bye week and invoke the Student Assistance Fund to help Antoine purchase new clothes -- many of his belongings were still in Louisiana when the flood hit -- but it took about six weeks for Robertson to work with Thomas to collect the detailed damage documentation needed for a crowd-funding effort.

"It takes legwork to reach out and find interpretations and precedents for things that have happened, and to navigate the NCAA rules," Eubanks said. "Without Lorne, this wouldn't be possible."

On Oct. 14, Antoine's family got the go-ahead to launch a fundraiser on Youcaring.com. Donations reached the $100,515 goal -- the exact cost of documented damages -- within just five days, even though Stanford wasn't allowed to publicize the campaign because of its status as a non-profit.

By the time all was said and done, the combination of human generosity and social media had flexed its muscles: 137 donations raised a total of $106,469 dollars. One anonymous contribution totaled $25,000, while the remainder of the list reveals an assortment Antoine's Stanford teammates, his coaches, former Cardinal players, and several fans.

The fundraiser closed having raised $106,469. The excess $5,954 must be donated to charity, according to the NCAA bylaw.

As the money trickled in last week, Thomas said she was "overwhelmed" by the outpouring of support.

"I just wanted [Stanford] to take care of my son," she said. "But then we saw what the Stanford family could do. It's really a blessing."

Malik Antoine is similarly grateful.

"Even when things get to their toughest, someone is always there to help," he said. "This world is full of great people that are willing to help you in tough times. I'm so happy that I chose a place that truly values family."

And although a thorough reconstruction still awaits the home -- it hasn't even fully dried from the flood yet -- Antoine's next visit home from college will be a happier occasion, instead of one highlighted by devastation in his childhood backyard.