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Bevo’s Daily Roundup: Op-ed: Tom Herman’s firing, multi-million dollar payout ‘bad national publicity’ for Texas during pandemic
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A new opinion piece in the
Austin American-Statesman pulls no punches at the Texas Longhorns, after the university opted to pay out roughly $20 million to recently fired head coach Tom Herman and his coaching staff. Notably, this was during a pandemic.
From the
Statesman: “Educational and human values aside, the consequences of this firing and hiring are bad national publicity. Even Sports Illustrated sees the callous irony that UT athletics, after laying off 35 people, not filling another 35 positions and having almost 300 employees take a temporary pay cut, effectively is throwing away over $20 million. Money is critically needed elsewhere at UT Austin for academics and outreach initiatives. One response, of course, will be that the money for coaches comes from private donors. No matter. It is the moral responsibility of the president of our highly ranked public research university to convince donors to give their money to vital university activities rather than to a euphemistically defined extracurricular that can cause traumatic brain Injury to players and distorts our educational values from seventh grade through college.”