When I received a text message Monday morning while at work, I went through my normal routine of concealing my phone and cautiously peering between my legs to read the message.
Hoping the content would add some excitement to my lackluster day, I read the message with optimism — only to be severely disappointed. The bearer of bad news informed me of the unfortunate encounter Sergio Kindle’s vehicle had with a Jefferson West apartment.
Being a diehard Longhorn football fan, my heart immediately sunk. Was Kindle injured? I immediately asked to be excused to “use the rest room” and locked myself in a stall to read all I could online about the incident, hopefully in enough time to ensure that my co-workers did not think I had some kind of personal problem.
Reading the comments below the news stories, I was not shocked to see that Texas’ athletic boo birds were on the prowl.
These are the same miserable people who crawl out of their holes to call for Mack Brown to be fired due to off-field controversies, complain when a successful football coach gets a deserved raise and question the value of having athletes like Kindle on campus.
They trivialize the significance of UT athletics in general, but what would the University be sans athletics?
To me, it would be nothing but a glorified, gargantuan Rice University. And who really wants to go to Rice anyway?
The fact of the matter is Texas athletics, most specifically football, is a very lucrative business. Just take a look at the numbers.
According to the Sports Business Journal, UT ranked No. 1 in total sports revenue last year, raking in about $120 million — more than half of which was the product of profits generated from the football program. In other words, Sergio Kindle and his fellow student athletes are big-time money makers for the University.
In fact, divided out evenly, each student-athlete on the football team generated approximately $1.12 million for UT last year.
Take into consideration that the athletic department has to give five percent of its revenues to the University, and the football team generated approximately $3.65 million for the academic benefit of the University. Divided out per player like before, that means Sergio Kindle created $56,000 last year for the school — not the athletic department.
That prodigious sum will likely exceed the lifetime donations most people reading this paper would ever consider giving back to the University.
So sure, Kindle and his teammates might just be football players, but they are far different from you or me in the eyes of the University — and good sense justifies this sentiment.
The aforementioned boo birds who are eager to point out the missteps that occur within the athletic department are either single-minded academics who are jealous of DeLoss Dodds’ ability to outperform them or students who have never attended a Longhorn football game and do not really understand what it means to don burnt orange.
As Texas law does not address fleeing the scene of accidents resulting in damage to buildings as a crime, Kindle is not guilty of a criminal offense. According to his attorney, Kindle is only required to file a report with the Texas Department of Transportation, which his lawyer said he planned to do last Monday. In other words, Kindle performed all the necessary duties that were required by law.
For once, I would like to see people relax and wait to pass judgment. Most people screaming foul want to make sure Kindle is not receiving special treatment. Seeing as Kindle, like any normal Joe off the drag, is planning to pay for the damages he caused to both the apartment complex and the girl’s personal belongings, I see no further action necessary.
It is hypocritical of people to call for intensified scrutiny and to apply sweeping allegations to a situation just because a student happens to be an extremely valuable, high-profile athlete. I hope that if I was in Kindle’s unfortunate situation, that The Daily Texan and other media outlets would not throw me under the bus.
But then again, I’m just a lowly columnist. I’m not worth the print.
Earnest is a finance junior.
