SPORTSbyBROOKS.com stumbled upon an article by the San Antonio Express-News, that Texas A&M coach Dennis Franchione was sending out a secret e-mail newsletter to select boosters with information about his football team that he was withholding from the media. Franchione was charging a yearly fee of $1,200 to each booster.
The info included injury reports that were not provided to the media along with assessments of players by the A&M coaching staff that were much more candid than what was made available to the public.
Franchione: “I knew it was probably going to be controversial. I certainly didn’t mean for it to be that. When I knew you guys were starting to ask around a bit, I thought, ‘Maybe we shouldn’t do this.'”
The money collected was “used to underwrite his personal Web site, coachfran.com.”
Considering players can lose scholarships and receive hefty suspensions for receiving money from boosters, what made Franchione say to himself that this was a good idea? How unfair is it to Aggie fans that he was withholding information from the media so he could stuff it into his secret newsletter to boosters? Fans rely on the media to supply them with information they can’t normally obtain through just watching games, and Franchione completely undermined that whole process. How stupid and selfish.
