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Texas Tech Red Raiders (official thread)
- By ScriptOhio
- College Football
- 43 Replies
Can Texas Tech billionaire booster Cody Campbell fix college sports?
Texas Tech's billionaire booster has turned the Red Raiders into a powerhouse. Can he fix college sports next?
Can Texas Tech billionaire booster Cody Campbell fix college sports?
LEAN IN CLOSELY. Cody Campbell is surprisingly soft-spoken. On a cool Friday night in Fort Worth, Texas, a night built for high school football, over the din of cowbells and rattling bleachers and Will Smith's "Wild Wild West," it's difficult to hear the man who has become the loudest, most controversial voice in a fight to shape the future of college sports.
Did he just say he hates political campaigning? The guy who paid millions of dollars in the past half decade to capture the ear of President Donald Trump? The guy who has paid millions more to put himself in television ads and grab headlines with brash statements about the greed and ego of college football's power brokers? Is that what he just said? It is.
Campbell is calmly fiddling with the lid of a paper coffee cup, watching the All Saints' Episcopal High School football team blow out its final home opponent of the season. He doesn't holler at coaches or referees. His only reaction when his 14-year-old son, a 290-pound mauler on the offensive line, flattens an opposing linebacker is a pair of raised eyebrows and a small grin that barely creases the edges of his salt-and-pepper goatee.
Campbell, 44, is an oil-made billionaire. At Texas Tech, where he has bankrolled much of the football team's unprecedented launch into national relevance and current spot in the College Football Playoff, he gets as many interview requests as the head coach. The former offensive lineman had a brief NFL career before co-founding one of the largest private oil and gas companies in West Texas, a business he still runs on top of his duties as a father of four, an active Republican fundraiser and the chairman of Texas Tech's board of regents.
"It feels like every day is 10 days," Campbell says, taking a swig of his coffee.
He's busy. So why, now that he has helped repair the Red Raiders football program, is Campbell spending significant time and money trying to fix college sports? That's the question most people in the industry ask when they first meet him. What does he really want?
Most of those folks, Campbell said, leave their meetings surprised. He is not the backslapping, overly confident charmer in a ten-gallon hat the headlines might lead you to imagine. He doesn't stand out in the crowd of parents filling the bleachers despite his broad shoulders and 6-foot-4 frame.
"I'm not what they expect me to be, I guess," he says. "I'm not J.R. Ewing or whatever."
Campbell and his adversaries -- most notably the commissioners of the four power conferences -- agree that the NCAA is suffering from an inability to enforce its own rules. They agree that a fix will require help from Congress. But each side accuses the other of proposing solutions that are motivated by self-interest rather than what's best for college sports.
Is Campbell a misinformed newcomer, as some commissioners have asserted, who bought his way into influence? Or is he the fresh voice a broken system needs to embrace its new professionalized reality?
"I'm a threat to the status quo," Campbell says. "But the status quo is failing. ... A lot of people want to hold on to the way things used to be. The fact is, we've already crossed the Rubicon."
ON THE MORNING of Texas Tech's top-10 showdown with BYU in early November -- the biggest game in Lubbock in nearly 20 years -- Campbell carves through campus, leaving a wake of fans spinning their necks and calling after him.
Bundled-up frat boys pause mid-beer-sip and smack their buddies in the ribs.
"Yo, that's the rich dude! Sir, thank you!"
"Bring 'er home, Cody! Bring 'er home!" they yell through cupped hands.
A man in a Tech jersey asks for a selfie. He's holding a poster of Campbell's face. The eyes have been replaced by laser beams and it reads "Mad Cuz You Broke." Campbell chuckles, then obliges.
Campbell is the chief architect of an NIL collective, The Matador Club, that has paid more than $60 million to athletes at Texas Tech since 2022, much of it to the football team. The club's aggressive approach to the NCAA's new rules has rebuilt a program that historically struggled to make bowl games into a legitimate contender to bring a national championship to the football-crazed outpost in West Texas.
Campbell served on the committee that hired coach Joey McGuire in 2021. He donated $25 million to help rebuild the football stadium. He spearheaded the fundraising effort for the parts of the football payroll that didn't come directly out of his pocket. He even watched film to evaluate prospects for one of the nation's best transfer portal classes this offseason.
For his efforts, Campbell moves through a Texas Tech game day with the same unfettered reign as Jerry Jones at a Cowboys game. He might as well own the place. Outside the stadium, he chats with a security guard and slides into a VIP section behind the set of ESPN's "College GameDay," barely breaking stride.
The show's stars take time between their segments to shake his hand. Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark introduces Campbell to a pair of television executives in sharply tailored suits. Campbell, in dad jeans and a black baseball cap, nods along as they speak into his ear. They'd like to set a meeting. They'll come to him.
The university's president strolls over to say hello. He knows Campbell's wife, Tara, and each of their kids by name. Kent Hance, a former chancellor and legendary yarn-spinning Texas political power broker who is the only man to beat George W. Bush in an election, seeks him out with a familiar smile and wave.
"It doesn't really feel strange," says Tara, also a Tech alum, as another fan asks her husband for a photo. "These are our people. It feels like family."
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