Longhorns Mailbag: UT worth millions to Durant
One day last December, two months into Kevin Durant’s here-today, gone-tomorrow basketball career at Texas, someone asked him about the NBA rule that had brought him to Austin.
Not long before Kevin Durant signed his letter-of-intent to UT, the league had passed a new ordinance essentially forcing high schoolers to wait one year after graduation before jumping to the NBA.
For Kevin Durant, the new rule had delayed a dream, not to mention a couple million dollars in salary. He didn’t mind.
“It was a blessing in disguise,” Kevin Durant said that day in December.
Earlier this week, that blessing came dramatically undisguised.
Some people would have you believe a college education – or, in Kevin Durant’s case, a quarter of a college education - is priceless. Turns out, Kevin Durant’s one year at UT was worth a very specific price tag.
Try $60 million.
Including signing bonus, that’s the sum Nike will pay Kevin Durant over the next seven years as part of his new shoe endorsement contract, a figure that absolutely dwarfs the piddling rookie contract the Seattle SuperSonics are set to pay him.
It’s a check Kevin Durant could not have cashed if not for his one season as a Longhorn.
In that one season, in which he was named a consensus national player of the year, Kevin Durant made quite a household name for himself. In a flurry of 30-point games, many of them nationally televised, Kevin Durant became a hot commodity. He became a name brand.
In short, he became the kind of famous that moves a whole lot of sneakers.
Had he been allowed to jump straight from high school to the NBA, it would have taken him years as a pro to amass the kind of shoe-selling cachet that he has now.
Of the NBA’s collection of superstars who skipped college, only LeBron James carried the kind of brand-name weight that Kevin Durant carries now.
James is the only NBA rookie to have cashed a bigger endorsement paycheck as a rookie. He signed with Nike for $90 million in 2003.
Kevin Durant can approach that sum only because most of the basketball-watching public already knows his name.
For that, Kevin Durant can thank David Stern for making him go to college.
The NBA’s one-year-out rule might have denied Kevin Durant from making millions last year. But, in the end, it made him many more millions this year.
Sixty million dollars, just to wear shoes?
Think about that the next time you write that check to your college loan lender.
And now, it’s time to clean out the ol’ Mailbag …
Are the Longhorns capable of going undefeated this year (in football)?
– Willie Gonzales, San Antonio
In theory, the Longhorns have far too many holes to go undefeated this year. They’re facing their biggest makeover in years on the offensive line, and the secondary needs three new starters as well.
However, the Longhorns do have a shot at going undefeated this year, and for that they can thank their friendly neighborhood schedule-maker. Aside from rivalry games against Oklahoma in Dallas and Texas A&M in College Station, UT gets all of its toughest tests (Nebraska, TCU, Texas Tech) at home. Plus, there’s no meeting with Ohio State on the docket to potentially muck things up in September.
In your expert opinion, where is the greater area of concern this year: the offensive line, or the secondary?
– Matt, San Antonio
We’ll answer like Deion Sanders in the old Pizza Hut commercials: Both. The offensive line returns just one player – Tony Hills – who started every game last season. It returns two who started a handful of games, but one of those – guard Cedric Dockery – is coming off of offseason knee surgery. Depth is going to be a problem here, so much so that the Longhorns could end up playing a few true freshmen in spurts (see below).
The secondary, meanwhile, is also a mess. It returns only one full-time starter (safety Marcus Griffin) and its second-most experienced player, Drew Kelson, just moved to safety from linebacker. The Longhorns could end up playing so many youngsters here that secondary coach Duane Akina will think he’s vying for the Arnold Schwarzenegger role in “Kindergarten Cop II.”
This is not to say the Longhorns don’t have talent in both areas. But if there are any units apt to experience growing pains this season at UT, these are them.
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