MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — Because he’s a billionaire, chairman of the Texas Tech University Board of Trustees and the school’s biggest superfan, the easiest thing for Cody Campbell to do is to keep pouring money into the school’s athletic programs and let nature take its course.
“The best thing that could happen for Texas Tech is that the whole thing continues to be chaotic,” he said.
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But Campbell is an oilman and a problem solver at heart, and he has a clear vision of where college sports is now and where it needs to go if it is to survive beyond 2030.
In an interview with The Associated Press ahead of Tech’s college football playoff game against Oregon State, Campbell argued Congress needs to create a new entity to oversee college sports. What is its main focus? Maximize revenue.
“We’ve professionalized the cost side of college athletics,” he said. “But we’re still running this side income-generating program.”
The idea of creating a new agency thrust Campbell into a national conversation about how to run an industry that now pays players millions of dollars but also risks bankrupting athletic departments and destroying smaller sports funded by football and basketball.
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In a series of television ads that air during college football games (which some networks briefly refused to air), Campbell urged Congress to rewrite a 64-year-old law that prohibits college conferences from selling their television rights as a group, as leagues like the NFL and NBA do.
He believes smarter TV architecture could bring in $7 billion in additional revenue annually. In an interview with The Associated Press, he said the solution was more complex than simply changing the law, tearing up existing agreements and starting over.
“Congress needs to create a governance system that allows them to make business decisions that maximize their value,” Campbell said of university leadership.
He saw an entity not with one commissioner, but with a handful of people, all running their own sports and making their own decisions about media rights.
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Campbell disdained the status quo, and those who defended it — like conference commissioners, some athletic directors and school presidents — questioned the notion that his vision would wrest power from all of them. He explains that by putting more money in their pockets, everyone becomes stronger.
Greg Sankey of the SEC believes Campbell’s views “reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the reality of college sports.”
Campbell’s response to commissioners and other critics of his: “I’d say, ‘How many private equity deals have you done?’ I’ve done a dozen or more. “How many times have you issued public bonds or funded multimillion-dollar projects? “I’ve done that a lot. Have you actually played college football?”
dealmaker from west texas
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Campbell, who grew up in the West Texas town of Canyon, was an all-league offensive lineman with the Red Raiders in the early 2000s and with the Indianapolis Colts in 2005.
He made his money through real estate and oil deals. He and his partner John Sellers have sold four iterations of his company, Double Eagle Energy, for a total value of about $13 billion, according to ESPN.
The money allowed Campbell to almost single-handedly change the fortunes of Texas Tech athletics. He donated $25 million to help rebuild Texas Tech University’s football stadium. The Matador Club, which he leads, has reportedly funneled more than $60 million to Texas Tech players since 2022, taking advantage of lax regulations in the NIL’s infancy.
“I know some of the commissioners didn’t necessarily agree with them and felt he wasn’t seeing the big picture,” Red Raiders coach Joey McGwire said. “But when you’re in the room, you understand. He’s smarter than you.”
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Private equity is only a short-term solution
Campbell believes it’s not the money but the experience he gained raising money that makes him suited to help shape college athletics.
For example, he sees the role of private investment — the kind that is making headlines at the Big Ten, Big 12, Utah and elsewhere — as a bridge to the day when conferences maximize their media rights. He said it was not a permanent solution, especially with the way the issue was discussed at the meeting.
“It’s basically just payday loans, the way these things are structured,” Campbell said. “They don’t really address the underlying problem.”
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Congress has answers, but no right answers
Campbell has positioned himself as a supporter of the SCORE Act, legislation aimed at regulating college sports that has been stalled in Congress for a year. Although he disagrees with its key points and sees it more as a launch point than a final product.
“I don’t think a lot of people who have followed sports for a long time believe that the NCAA is the right entity to be given tremendous additional powers to override state law and be immune from any type of lawsuit,” he said, noting two key elements proposed by the bill.
He thinks a new entity might be able to build that trust, and said he’s pushing the agenda not to benefit Texas Tech — all Texas schools, he said, have big backers who can write big checks according to any rule book — but because of what college and college athletics have done for him.
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Believe college athletics is bipartisan
Campbell capitalized on the reality that football and basketball provided all the funding for college sports, arguing that television was the best way to save it all.
He said the extra $7 billion a year would fund women’s and Olympic sports, which have become increasingly vulnerable as attention and resources turn to football.
Campbell, a reliable Republican fundraiser, has said he is aligned with President Donald Trump, who signed an executive order called “Save College Sports,” part of which calls for the protection and expansion of women’s and nonprofit sports.
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However, Campbell sees no conflict with the fact that the changes to the TV deal are more consistent with the bill proposed by Democrats. Rewriting the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 headlines legislation introduced by Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington state.
“I know he supports two things in general,” Cantwell said in an earlier interview with The Associated Press. “One is to make sure the top two (conferences) don’t run away with all the money. Secondly, I think he sees it as a way to balance resources across all schools so that we can still have ‘Any Saturday.'”
Campbell said he is a realist. He knew Congress was slow to work and didn’t always care about sports. However, his confidence in finding a solution did not diminish. He cited internal polling that showed more than 85 percent of Americans “want to see women’s sports and the Olympics preserved.”
“Eighty-five percent of Americans don’t agree on anything,” he said. “The reality is, if we don’t make some reforms and we’re not careful, these sports are going to disappear.”
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