Report: Texas plans to start paying their athletes $10,000 stipend

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Lost in the hubbub of media days and North Carolina investigations was a report on Tuesday night from the Dallas Morning News stating that Texas, if they lose the Ed O’Bannon ruling, plans on playing their athletes a $10,000 stipend to cover cost of attendance and the usage of their likeness:

The University of Texas will spend nearly $6 million a year to comply with a string of recent legal rulings requiring colleges to be more generous to their scholarship athletes.

…

Patterson said UT won’t have problems paying the extra $6 million to its players. That money will break down to about $10,000 for each player. The money will cover college expenses that aren’t covered by a traditional full scholarship and give each player $5,000 in compensation for the university’s use of his image.

First and foremost, this is a good thing that Texas is planning on doing. I’ll avoid the rant today, but if you’ve read my work over the last few years, you know that I am firmly in the corner of paying college athletes.

But the other part of this is that Texas isn’t necessarily alone in this plan. They may be able to better afford that stipend than any other school in the country — there is a benefit to having the richest athletic department — but any athletic director that isn’t trying to find a way to get this into the budget will fall behind if (when?) this ruling is finalized.