Happy Thursday! It’s time for a new FOIAball.
Today, we’re going to talk about a bunch of billionaires. Powerful, influential, extremely rich boosters who circle a major college football program.
If you’ve been with us for a bit, you know FOIAball has no fear or concern about publishing anything that’s true. And no qualms about reporting on anyone.
If that’s a mission you believe in, become a paid subscriber to FOIAball. In a world where the uber-wealthy want journalists to leave them be, you can support an independent publication that isn’t gonna be cowed.
How do you ID donors who want to stay private?
As you may know by now, I am a FOIA absolutist. I believe anything and everything a government institution possesses should be disclosed to the public.
But that’s not how things work.
Open records laws across the country have all kinds of carve-outs. One particularly maddening exemption is around donors to public universities. It’s practically impossible to get the identities of people who give big state schools money.
Which is wild, when you think about it. Universities exist in a murky in-between, public institutions that accept loads of private cash. This year, the University of Texas’ athletics department raked in $168 million in donations.
And sure, some of that is five and ten-dollar gifts. But a lot comes in big chunks. That is money that allows donors to exert influence on places that are supposed to be operated solely for the public benefit.
I think we should know who these people are.
In the Lone Star State, we can’t. The Texas Public Information Act has an explicit exemption titled, “Confidentiality of Identity of Private Donor to Institution of Higher Education.”
Oh well. What can you do?
Recently, I received some emails between Texas’ athletics fundraising team, its old NIL collective, and donors whose names were redacted. It was over 400 pages of mostly nothing. But a conversation on page 333 piqued my interest.
In it, a staffer was trying to get a booster to up their gift, flagging a perk for a higher total. “A $1 million commitment paid out over five years,” they wrote, “would grant you in-game sideline access all season for the next five seasons.”
A million bucks and you get the best seats in DKR, the kind of access that shows everyone in Texas just how important you are.
And the Texas Public Information Act doesn’t have a single statute, exemption, or carve-out to protect the identity of people who have been given sideline passes to Texas Longhorns football games.
Hook ‘em.
FOIAball obtained a list of individuals given sideline access for Texas home games during the 2025 season. On it were well over 100 people who all seem like, well, the kind of people for whom a million-dollar donation would be no problem. I’m talking big money.
We can’t say for certain these passes were given out specifically for donations. But we do know these people got them. And it had me wondering: How much accumulated wealth might be standing on the field at a single college football game?
Well, if all these people attended the same game, the Longhorns’ sideline would have a net worth higher than the average annual GDP of fifty countries.
This feature is gonna be in two parts. Today’s newsletter is free to read. Next week, we’ll be dropping Part Two, which will only be for paid subscribers.
That’s going to have lots and lots of fun details. Today, we’re talking billionaires. Next, we’ll go a rung below them, where we’ve got big political donors, venture capital and private equity titans, boosters feuding over an inheritance, scions of an entire city, and a car dealership owner facing multiple felony charges. It is a beautiful tapestry. There’s even a Rothschild angle if you want to get conspiratorial about how Texas landed Arch Manning. I know I do!
If you aren’t a subscriber yet and want to read all about it, upgrade today. Plus, you won’t have to worry about doing it on Wednesday!
At least four people granted sideline passes to Texas home games are on Forbes’ billionaires list. That’s not always the most accurate, but it’ll work for this purpose.
We can put $10.5 billion on the board right away. First up is Jeff Hildebrand. Like a lot of the folks tied to Texas football, Hildebrand made his fortune in oil and gas.
His company, Hilcorp, has routinely been named one of the worst polluters among all oil and gas companies, a truly ignominious distinction. They’ve racked up tons of government fines. The EPA twice proposed Hilcorp enter a consent decree, like it’s a rogue police force abusing civilians. Its fracking efforts in Pennsylvania have been blamed for earthquakes.
Just a week after the Trump administration renditioned Maduro, Hildebrand went to the White House, saying he’s ready to begin investing in Venezuela.
Will Texas’ roster one day be purchased with profits from a sovereign nation’s illegally commandeered national resources?
I mean, it’s college football. So… probably!
We can add another $2 billion to the total for Christopher “Kit” Goldsbury. He married the daughter of the inventor of Pace Picante. Yes, Texas has that salsa money! Seriously, it even says that on Forbes.
(I know I am often sarcastic, but I do genuinely love how deranged this all is. You couldn’t write it better.)
After a divorce, Goldsbury bought out his wife’s shares of Pace for $95 million. He then sold the company to Campbell’s for $1.1 billion. He now runs a fund in San Antonio, where he recently sold a cherry tomato company. Nature Sweet. You’ve probably eaten them.
A hair below him on the list, with $1.9 billion, is John Goff. Goff made his fortune selling his real estate firm to Morgan Stanley in 2007, then buying it back after the market collapsed. Hate all you want, that is some serious business savvy.
What’s he doing with his time now?
According to a Forbes cover story on Goff, he’s the co-owner of an actual castle, where visitors come to hunt exotic game on its grounds. The website says it has springbok and impala and wildebeest and ibex, all beautiful animals raised just for people to shoot. Super cool.
And, look, I know what you are thinking. Wealthy titan of industry. An isolated castle. A taste for the “exotic.” You’re thinking they hunt people! I’ll admit, it does have a similar set-up to fictional tales about the elites hunting humans for sport.
But no. There’s no mention of that on its website. None. Whatsoever.
Last on our list is Bryan Sheffield. He is worth an estimated $1.3 billion. His money was made after taking over oil wells that his grandfather owned.
Don’t call him a nepo baby. At least not until you read the next couple of sentences. Because that’s not how he made his fortune. No, Sheffield got rich by then selling those wells. To his dad.
I am not making that up. And his dad was also put under a consent decree, this one by the FTC, for attempting to collude with OPEC to inflate oil prices.
Fantastic sport we all love. Honestly, no notes.
All told, with $15.7 billion from just four people, we're talking a sideline net worth a little below the annual average GDP of Brunei.
Which is to say, a coach making $10 million a year probably doesn’t feel all that powerful when these people are standing behind him every game.
And we haven’t even touched on the whole rest of the circus.
We’ll see you next week, when we dive further into this list. Don’t hit a paywall then. Upgrade your FOIAball subscription now.
Silhouettes via Magnific
