“Everything is bigger in Texas” they say and this is particularly true for the outlandishly extravagant annual salaries of three men who are employed by the intercollegiate athletic department at the University of Texas at Austin. According to the Texas Tribune Government Salaries Explorer website, the three highest paid individuals in the entire state make well over two million dollars per year. William Mack Brown takes home an astonishing $3,824,856 a year, while Charles Rena Strong and Richard D. Barnes each make $3,025,275 and $2,610,000, respectively.
As you can see, college sports programs are incredibly lucrative entities due to high sponsorship revenue. This is particularly true for Koch Industries, as they recently aligned with Learfield Sports, a marketing company that represents major athletic programs such as Texas A&M, Oklahoma State Universities and over a dozen other schools.
According to a recent Think Progress investigation of Texas A&M’s contract with Learfield Sports, there is a rather confrontational snag in the company’s rules for selling sponsorships.
According to the current contract, Learfield allows multimillion dollar sponsorships from billionaire brothers, Charles and David Koch, who are planning a 2016 spending onslaught that will eclipse and overpower all previous outside political efforts – a nearly 900 million dollar effort to elect conservative candidates to the presidency, Congress and state legislatures across the country.
However, Learfield simultaneously prohibits sponsorships deals with the makers of feminine hygiene products, as well as contraceptives. Under the current agreement with Learfield, Texas A&M and Oklahoma State University are guaranteed 3.6 and 5.5 million dollars in rights fees for the 2015-2016 fiscal year.
The deal states that the schools receive the guaranteed minimum fee and that the marketing company has the liberty to sell advertisements to whomever they wish – except to companies who endorse: gambling [excluding state-authorized lottery and gaming establishments], the consumption of liquor [excluding malt beverages or wine within radio programming exclusively], sexually explicit materials, tobacco use and feminine hygiene products, to name just a few.
Obviously, there is a shocking disparity between the University’s priorities and those of the students and I believe that this is made evident for three separate reasons. First, there is a student-sponsored green fund at Texas A&M that supports sustainability and eco-friendly measures. Conversely, the Koch brothers deny climate change, but have already sponsored at least one Aggies athletic event.
Secondly, according to the Gutmacher Institute, more than 99 percent of American women – aged 15 to 44- have used at least one contraceptive measure during sexual intercourse in their lifetime. Despite these prominent statistics, contraceptives were placed under the same prohibitions as tobacco, liquor and sexually explicit materials.
Lastly, this kind of partnership with the Koch brothers sends the message that both tampons and methods of birth control are more shameful than the numerous activities conducted by Koch Industries that required the company to pay millions of dollars in fines for Environmental Protection Agency violations.
Festering greed has driven these school administrators to join the GOP in their “Koch addiction,” all the while putting their students’ concerns on the backburner and sending the message that contraceptives and feminine hygiene products are disgraceful.
Texas A&M and Oklahoma State University athletics can chalk this one up as an L.
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