Now pay to play has brought its cute self to the University of Texas.

In a front page investigative reporting piece, the Austin American Statesman has found some really magical happenings among rich white boys who know each other very well but had no idea they were helping each other out.  Magic like that happens all the time in Texas.

The University of Texas regents took the unprecedented action of investing the University’s money all on their own without any advice from their money management firms — $10 million dollars of it, as a  “unrestricted, unconditional” investment.

Wow! A Real Calendar!

The investment is with a start-up called myedu.com.  My edu.com is nothing new.  It collects public information from several websites and public records and allows students to access it all in one place.  It also has a calculator and a calendar.   You know, things your average college student doesn’t have.  It’s free.

Now, the Austin American Statesman found something interesting about this unprecedented investment –

The governing board of the University of Texas System invested $10 million in a privately held company with close ties to the system’s former chancellor, the chancellor’s son and associates of Gov. Rick Perry.

Hot Damn! A Calculator!

I’ll be a second cousin to monkey’s uncle!  Ain’t that a damn coincidence?

Not only is the former chancellor’s son a founder and senior vice president of the start-up, but the political connection doesn’t stop there.  Honey, this whole deal is more connected than a dorm room power strip  —

The company’s chairman and CEO, Michael Crosno, served on the governor’s statewide re-election finance committee last year.

MyEdu adviser Bob Pearson, who holds a stake in the company, donated to the governor’s re-election campaign and is a former Perry-appointed chairman of an advisory panel that recommends proposals

for state funding through the Emerging Technology Fund.

Margaret Spellings, who was secretary of education under President George W. Bush, is also an adviser to MyEdu.

But none of these people, including the Board of Regents, knew anything about all this and are stompin’ that this is not, I repeat, goldarn not, some sort of insider deal.

Yep, it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck but it’s a porcupine.

It’s also that magical things that happens when you have the right friends.

It also appears that facility and students at UT are not as impressed with myedu.com as the regents are.

Yep, that’s the UT Board of Regents.  And, yes, they are all appointed by Governor Rick Perry.  In case you’re wondering, UT became a majority minority school in 2010.

And we just invested “unrestricted, unconditional” $10 million dollars with something old white guys think college students will like.