Faulty Reporting Had People Believing the Texas Longhorns Were Going to Pay Players

Early in the day Wednesday high school recruits from all over the country clamored to get a copy of their best highlight tape in the mail to the Texas Longhorns. While Charlie Strong's team is showing promise that has nothing to do with it. No, they want to play for a school that is going to hand them $5K for the use of their likeness for marketing and merchandise purposes.

If only it was true...

@GrantGunter

For some reason DallasNews.com ran with a story that sounded too good to be true. According to the tale that Michael A. Lindenberger wove the Longhorns were going to be spending about $10,000 per player to meet the new requirements placed on schools following some recent legal rulings.

Of the $10K half would go to the school directly covering more expenses for players and the other half as compensation for using the player's likeness.

Holy cow, right? Forget about Charlies Strong's strict rules! What kid would not want to go to school and be handed $5K? This is too good to be true!

And it was.

For some reason Lindenberger took the answer Longhorns AD Steve Patterson gave to a hypothetical and reported it as fact.

Told Texas AD Steve Patterson was posed the HYPOTHETICAL of what they would do if they were required to pay athletes. Not actually doing it.
— darren rovell (@darrenrovell) October 22, 2014

This is a pretty gross misrepresentation of the facts.

It will be interesting to see how the site explains the mistake and what they do about it (I could use some help on the site Michael; doesn't pay much though).

[SportsDayDFW]

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