Hello and happy Friday!
So why the one-day delay? You can blame one man for that. And why is this piece free instead of paywalled? You can thank that very same man.
After the past two weeks, he literally needs no introduction.
Yes! This week I joined the Pulitzer Prize and National Magazine Award-winning podcast Pablo Torre Finds Out to talk about … me!
Pablo (I call him Pablo now), Jess Smentana, and I talked about everything: Osama bin Laden, Spotify, UNC, JFK, and Texas’ big-money boosters.
Then, Jess got to do something that’s never been done before in the history of college football. Look at her face when she found out!
I’ve had that very same look plastered across my face for like two straight weeks.
On to the blog!
But before I begin, can I ask if you would consider upgrading to a paid subscription to FOIAball? Not only was the piece supposed to be paywalled, you’re getting a whole extra podcast, too!
Plus, I think by now I’ve shown this thing is gonna work. Help me make it even bigger by upgrading today!
Meet the real-life Buddy Garrity
When it comes to dubious dollars floating around college football, there is no bigger stereotype than the shady local car dealership owner.
Free wheels, no-show jobs, bags of cash. Gregarious and unscrupulous. So cliched it became a character on Friday Night Lights.
But those tropes don’t appear out of nowhere. They’re based in reality. And honestly, reality, I learned this week, is so much more absurd.
Because, like, how many local businesses does a car dealership-owning booster have to be accused of burning down before a program revokes his sideline passes?
In Texas, it’s at least more than three!
Last week, FOIAball covered the billionaires roaming the Texas Longhorns’ sidelines at home football games. Which was neat.
Far more fascinating, though, are those just below that poverty line, zealously guarding meager fortunes that might dare to dip into the low nine figures. Egads, indeed. Still obscenely rich, but with none of the dignified air a billion dollars brings to the table.
At an average college football program, the sidelines are littered with them.
Before we dive in, a couple notes. As a reminder, this story is based on a list—obtained by FOIAball—of sideline passes given out by the University of Texas for home football games in 2025. These passes are a perk for donating $1 million to the school’s athletics department.
I can’t guarantee every person I’m about to mention gave that amount, but you’ll be able to tell why they’re on the list. Where I could find donations, I flagged them.
And while this is Texas-focused, don’t read this as some exposé of malign influence around the Longhorns. They were just the first school to respond to my request. They deserve a shoutout for that! We’ll do other schools soon.
Lastly, every sentence in this post is a subjective statement of opinion and not a declarative fact.
Which means, if you are an attorney reading this after a fuming client forwarded it to you, close the tab and go to lunch! But not before you put an annual subscription on their tab. You wouldn’t want them to think you weren’t doing your due diligence.
In 2010, the Longhorns unveiled a statue of Tex Moncrief inside Darrell K. Royal Stadium. Moncrief earned a fortune on the back of his father’s oil business, which, no joke, got its seed money from Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.
Fifteen years later, the Moncrief family is still attending Texas football games. On this list are Tex’s son, Dick, and his wife Marsland.
Then there’s Tex’s granddaughter Gloria, and her husband Erich. What a lovely chance for family to catch up. At least, you know, outside of the courtroom.
The two factions have been locked in a half-decade-long legal battle over the fate of Tex’s estate, rumored to be nearly a billion dollars. The feud features dueling accusations of elder abuse, at least seven related legal cases, and a restraining order.
Fam… this is all money that is not going to NIL. Get it together, please. Do you want to be right about who forged a patriarch’s signature, or do you want to win the SEC?
You do realize you haven’t won the SEC?
Also in the oil business, with a lower profile but big influence, is Javaid Anwar. The owner of Midland Energy, he established a scholarship in his daughter's name and donated $4 million to a capital project for the engineering school.
That’s not where his largesse does most of its work. He’s a very, very active political donor. On the national stage, Anwar’s given $17.8 million since 2010. In Texas, over that same time frame, $9.7 million. What party does he tend to back? Well, he’s loaned aircraft out to Gov. Greg Abbott’s PAC at least 30 times, at an expense of almost a half-million dollars.
What? You’ve never let a state governor borrow your jet? For shame.
For shame.
And while Texas has oil, in 2026, America’s wealth is tied up in big tech. The Longhorns have that app money, too, with one of Silicon Valley’s most famous venture capitalists among its donor base. Last year, through a family foundation, Bill Gurley gave $500,000 to the athletics department.
Gurley spent twenty years with Benchmark, where he funded some of the world’s most famous start-ups.
His best bet came on Uber. Gurley had Benchmark invest $11 million in the ride-hailing app’s Series A round. At one point, the firm’s stake in the company was valued at over $8 billion.
But his real street cred comes from the fact that Coach Taylor, Kyle Chandler, played him in Super Pumped. Not even Matthew McConaughey can say that.
Other family foundations reveal even bigger gifts. But none compare to the Moodys, who have over $3.5 billion sitting in a private fund. In the past two years, they have given $70 million to Texas athletics.
That’s most likely part of a $150 million pledge that got the family’s name on the school’s indoor arena. Guess how much money the foundation gave to Meals on Wheels in that same time? $312,250.
In fairness, that is more than I did.
There’s so much more. I may do another piece. I haven’t touched on the owner of the Texas Rangers, or the chairman of the Rothschild banking empire’s North America arm, or the political operative who got arrested for brandishing a gun at people painting his house. I don’t have time today for the Graham family, who founded an entire town.
Not to go all QAnon on you, but if I were gonna create a cabal of high-net-worth, well-connected individuals to secretly run the world, it would look like this.
Okay, let’s talk about the car dealership owner.
According to an archived About page for his business (which no longer mentions the family name), Bryan Hardeman purchased two car dealerships in 1978, at the age of 29. The hagiography doesn’t mention how he paid for it, but his father was an influential Texas state senator for two decades. I’m sure the loan wasn’t an issue.
Over time, Hardeman grew Continental Automotive Group to at least eight dealerships, where he sold Mercedes-Benzes, Infinitis, Subarus, Hondas, Audis, Dodges, and Jeeps. It’s a lucrative business. According to the Austin Business Journal, Continental did almost $756 million in revenue in 2021.
As he grew the empire, Hardeman became involved in, let's just say, myriad entanglements. Many of those have made local headlines, and some have wound up in court.
He’s certainly a UT donor. His family foundation gave the school $997,000 in 2024. But, for as much as he supports Austin institutions, according to authorities, he is also very into burning them down.
Hardeman was originally arrested in February 2024 on one count of arson and one count of burglary for allegedly setting fire to a bike shop whose owner refused to sell the business to him. Two months later, he was charged with three more counts of arson at two other locations. All told, he’s been accused of setting four fires at three locations.
The case against him is still ongoing, with an upcoming court appearance just next week.
And while we understand the notion of innocent until proven guilty, it was kind of shocking for FOIAball to see a person who is going around (maybe! allegedly!) torching local businesses to still be allowed on the sidelines for home football games. That can’t be good for the community!
But his name was on the list. Maybe it was an error. Or maybe he got the passes, and Texas asked him not to show up.
But, nope, lol. We were browsing some images on the athletic department’s website, and at the school’s Nov. 23 game against Arkansas, he (or, at least, someone who really, really looks like him) appears to be helping himself to fried okra at a tailgate for the school's biggest boosters.
Which is, honestly, about as college football as it gets.
If you enjoyed this, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to FOIAball. As you can tell, I love doing this! But I can’t keep doing it without you!
I’ll see you next week.
Buddy Garrity via YouTube
