TAMU AD Byrne's Email Regarding Texas and ESPN

[Elduderino]

Sorry if this has been posted already. I thought this would be interesting to some as the uh, unique, relationship between the University of Texas, ESPN, and NCAA has been of some discussion here; specifically as it relates to recruiting and such.

A&M's Athletic Director wrote an email depicting his concerns over the University's relationships with the World Wide Leader and the NCAA....

"The first year of cable system is the critical startup time. So far no cable systems have signed up. According to DeLoss (Texas AD DeLoss Dodds), tu (Texas) contract calls for one game with best efforts for a 2nd game. ESPN pushing hard to get clearances and inventory. Threatened Tech. DeLoss acknowledges ESPN rep did that but he stopped them from doing that any more. Privately Says he can control ESPN, publicly says he can't."

The next quote I think is particularly scary...

"ESPN pushing hard to help tu (Texas) recruit high school prospects. They along with tu (Texas) lobbying NCAA hard to get interp that permits HS games on LHN. We have a new NCAA President and DeLoss cited him along with other NCAA top brass that they have been working with. Worry about ESPN financial ties to NCAA. Worry about tu (Texas) personal ties to NCAA staff."

The wording here is important. According to this e-mail from the A&M athletic director, ESPN was pushing to help Texas recruit high school athletes. Not to put games on the network to make a profit. That's an important distinction. If ESPN was wanting to telecast high school games to mainly help Longhorn recruiting (and thus the Longhorn program, and thus the Longhorn Network) there are major issues. It's also of note that A&M was concerned with the money (i.e. power) ESPN had with the NCAA.

http://awfulannouncing.com/2011-article ... nment.html

Along with the ESPN article earlier in the year depicting Texas' ties to OrangeBloods and access to NCAA regarding "street agents," it should be pretty clear that there are potentially some serious conflict of interest issues in Austin.

[pezsez1]

The Longhorns' relationship with ESPN seems to be more blatantly wrong than our relationship with Will Lyles!

[briarduck]

Yikes I wonder whats going to happen with this...and are we really surprised?

More reasons to dislike UT

[wheaton4prez]

There are so many problems with Texas' media "friendships."

It would seem to be illegal booster activity for ESPN to help recruit.

We already have evidence showing that Texas has used the media to try to punish other schools that are competing with them for recruits. We have the smoking gun that they inserted the Lyles story into the news AND separately, the NCAA acknowledged that it was that story that got them to look at the case. The whole thing is looking more and more orchestrated.

And how about the reverse situation? Can we believe that Texas is going to be policed by the media (and the NCAA already admits that they rely on the media to police) as strictly when there are financial reasons for the media to look the other way?

The conflict of interest built in to conference deals like SEC+ESPN are bad enough. With individual programs? This should have reached scandal status a year ago.

[wheaton4prez]

A good way to think of this is to put it into political context.

What would people be saying if it came out that George Soros would pay CNN $100 million if Obama was re-elected?