DALLAS — He doesn’t need this. He can walk away right now, and leave the unseemly unraveling of college sports to someone else.
Hop on a plane and escape Washington D.C. and the land of everybody’s got an angle, and be home in the DFW Metroplex in a matter of hours. An amateur sports world of turmoil in his wake.
Or he could do what he has always done.
Fix the problem.
“I’ve built and sold $15 billion worth of companies,” Cody Campbell says. “I’m not a dumbass.”
Of all the upheaval, of all the unthinkable moves over the last four years that have drastically changed college sports, none would be more improbable than this.
A deep-pocket booster, a capital investment savant, saving college football – and by proxy, college sports – from itself.
He knows what you’re thinking. What does a billionaire businessman, a Texas Tech sports sugar daddy, know about saving college football?
The logical response: what do university presidents know? Because they’re the men and women in charge of it all now — and doing a catastrophically poor job of it.
Cody Campbell part of Donald Trump’s team
Campbell, 43, sees the dichotomy of it all, and at this point, the only thing that matters is the most powerful man in the world believes Campbell has a chance to assess the problems of college sports – with its front porch money-maker, football – and fix it.
Though the White House hasn’t officially announced it, President Trump and Campbell – a former offensive lineman at Texas Tech in the early 2000s – have spoken at length about how to fix the problems of the last four years of paradigm change within college sports. Change that seems to inevitably lead to the downsize, and in some cases, the elimination, of women’s and Olympic sports.
There won’t be a commission, as had been previously reported. A person close to the process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told USA TODAY Sports that it will follow much in the same way Trump deals with other problems: he finds a point person, and that person reports directly to him.
When asked if he were that person, Campbell said, ‘I’ve been in conversations with President Trump for quite some time now, and the one thing I can tell you is he cares very much about preserving and maintaining college sports. Not just football, but women’s sports and Olympic sports, and the opportunities they provide. It’s one of the best things we have culturally in this country.
‘I don’t want to see it die. And we can all see it’s dying.”
Cody Campbell part of problem and solution?
It is here where we address the obvious. The same person who will be charged with finding the fix to a myriad of issues, is the same booster who has been, in the eyes of many, part of the problem.
This time last year, Campbell – through the Texas Tech Matador Club collective – was busy convincing All-America pitcher NiJaree Canady to leave Stanford for a record-breaking million-dollar NIL deal. Leave the history and tradition of Stanford softball, for the great unknown in Lubbock, Texas.
A deal that quickly became the very definition of college sports losing its way. And soul.
A year later, Tech advanced to its first Women’s College World Series behind Canady, and lost in the championship series to rival Texas. And that’s only the shallow end of a deep and committed dive for Campbell and a handful of private Texas Tech donors.
But these are the rules laid out by those currently running college sports. There’s no rhyme or reason, no definitive lines to color between.
So Campbell and his donor group, like many others, take advantage of them. They know the rules, they’re playing the game.
They’re chasing the Big Ten and SEC, the two super conferences who have seized control of the present and future of college sports. There’s currently only one way for schools in other conferences to reach them and compete at the same level.
With cold, hard cash.
Cody Campbell isn’t just trying to fix Texas Tech
Campbell knows what a win over Texas in the Women’s CWS would’ve meant to Texas Tech, and what a College Football Playoff run this season will mean. He and his donor group have invested more than $300 million in facilities upgrades for the football program, and currently have $55 million in NIL contracts for all Texas Tech athletes for the 2025 season — a number believed to be the largest (by far) in the NCAA.
And that’s the irony of this story. Campbell doesn’t need to jump into the cesspool of D.C. politics, or massage the egos of the big personalities of college sports and their insular nature of self-protection.
He could just keep throwing hundreds of millions at Texas Tech and attempt to buy championships, and avoid all the agita.
But this is much bigger than that. This is about sports and society, and protecting a unique opportunity for all ― not just for the 34 schools in the Big Ten and SEC, or other universities fortunate enough to have deep-pocket boosters to bridge any financial divide.
‘When he dives into something to fix it, there’s no stone left unturned,’ says Texas Tech football coach Joey McGuire. ‘He’s going to find a way.’
There’s a reason officials in the Big Ten and SEC recoil at the mention of Campbell. It’s not just his brash use of existing NIL rules, but his public declarations that college sports is dying with a current caste system of winners and losers.
The winners: the Big Ten and SEC, with their billion-dollar media rights deals separating them from the rest of college sports.
The losers: everyone else, with media rights deals less than half of what the Big Ten and SEC earn.
The reorganization of college sports over the last four years is all about money. Those making it, and those losing it.
But Campbell has a different idea: share the wealth, increase revenue and watch college sports grow like never before.
What does a billionaire businessman know about saving college sports, you ask? More than you think.
Cody Campbell is built for job of saving college sports
This story begins two generations ago, where Bill Cagle, Campbell’s maternal grandfather, grew up in hardscrabble Childress, Texas. His family lived through the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, persevering through an ecological disaster in the Texas panhandle despite the barest of necessities.
Cagle made it out because he played football, earning a scholarship to Hardin-Simmons when it played in the old Division I Border Conference. Cagle, a member of the school’s Hall of Fame, was also captain of the baseball and track and field teams. A true Texas legend.
Campbell’s dad, Cliff, grew up in tiny Haskell, Texas, and was the first on his side of the family to go to college. A mega recruit long before the days of recruiting rankings, if Cliff didn’t play football, he never would’ve seen the inside of a classroom at Texas Tech.
Then there’s Cody, who was part of coach Mike Leach’s first recruiting class at Texas Tech. A four-year letterman at Tech, Campbell had a cup of coffee in the NFL with the Indianapolis Colts before deciding to use the business degree he earned.
His latest business move this spring with partner John Sellers, another former Texas Tech football player and booster: selling some of their energy company’s assets in the Permian, Texas oil basin for $4 billion. His two deals prior to that: $2.8 billion (2017) and $6.4 billion (2021).
It’s hard to find a better example of the value of a college education and the college sports experience – the very thing Campbell and many others within higher education believe is lost in the reshaping of amateur sports – than the Campbell family tree.
And what’s getting lost, Campbell says, is the hundreds of thousands of stories over the years just like his. Some with significantly more difficult beginnings, and equally inspiring success.
The sea change in college sports
College sports was once a personal investment on and off the field, a grind of four or five difficult but rewarding years that shaped a future. Now it’s monetarily transactional, a way station to the path of least resistance.
“I met my wife, met all of my best friends, and my life is what it is because I had the opportunity to play college football,” Campbell said. “I feel like I owe it to the system, to the institution of college sports, to try to help fix it and make it work again.”
The plan to make it work begins and ends with the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, which provides limited antitrust exemptions for sports leagues and allows them to pool media rights to sell collectively.
Campbell believes the four power conferences can pool their collective rights and generate significantly more revenue. The Big Ten and SEC, for numerous reasons – for starters, control of their brands and television windows on their own networks – want no part of it.
Or as one high-ranking SEC official, who spoke to USA TODAY Sports on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussions, said: “Why would we share revenue when we have the product that bears the fruit, and others don’t?”
Currently, the Big Ten, SEC, ACC and Big 12 earn an estimated $3 billion combined annually from media rights. But a high-placed industry official told USA TODAY Sports on the condition of anonymity due to the nature of the subject that a single-payer system (pooled rights) could double the current value of the combined power conference deals.
“But they can’t even agree on how many (conference) games to play,” the industry official said. “Do you really think they can agree on something like single payer?”
They may not have a choice.
The ink on the landmark House case settlement – which has ushered in revenue sharing between schools and players, and the need for increased revenue across college sports to pay for it – wasn’t even dry before multiple appeals were filed, including former athletes claiming Title IX violations in the disbursement of $2.8 billion backpay to former players.
But it’s the lawsuits that haven’t been filed that concern the presidents and chancellors of the power conferences. The House settlement also set the framework for private NIL deals that are not part of the university’s allowed maximum revenue share pool of $20.5 million for all athletes.
An accounting firm will decide “fair market value” for those private NIL deals, which will unquestionably be the difference in many high school and transfer portal signings. The firm has the power to cancel such deals it deems unfit.
Needless to say, a fair market arbiter in a free market economy is rife with legal pitfalls.
This is where the federal government comes into play — and where Campbell and Trump’s focus on college sports can help sherpa legislation through a deeply divided Congress. But at a price.
In the simplest of terms, if the SEC and Big Ten want protection from lawsuits and federal antitrust laws – officials from both conferences have had double-digit meetings with Congress over the last four years, begging for help – they’ll listen and negotiate and come to a viable agreement.
At least, in theory.
Because getting their collective arms around this beast won’t be easy. The threat of antitrust and Title IX lawsuits are one thing, the tentacles from those big picture problems go much deeper.
There’s employment law, creating a new governance structure for college sports, negotiation of complicated employment issues that pro sports spent decades figuring out — with the help of players as employees and collective bargaining.
College sports, meanwhile, is trying to shove it all through the eye of a needle. With multiple voices and opinions.
During the SEC spring meetings in May, exasperated SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, admitted, ‘I have people in my room asking, ‘Why are we still in the NCAA?’”
As it currently stands, there are two ways to fix the fallout of the last four years of paradigm change: make players employees and collectively bargain, or find significant revenue streams and reset the financial structure.
University presidents don’t want players as employees, because once down that road, players will collectively bargain and earn significantly more in media rights — and universities will earn significantly less.
But if leaders of college sports don’t want players as employees, and want Congress to implement liability protection from future lawsuits, what will they give in return to avoid an unending wave of litigation aimed at an association that over the years has failed spectacularly in court?
Senators from the states of Idaho, Wyoming, New Mexico and the like – where smaller Bowl Subdivision programs will be at a greater disadvantage with the advent of revenue sharing – aren’t going to for antitrust protection for the power conferences without financial gains that protect their respective universities.
Campbell, for lack of a better explanation, will be the deal-maker — with the power of the presidency, the threat of antitrust law and a growing disdain for the evolving state of college sports behind him.
None of his billion dollar deals of the past will have as much personal impact as this one. And here’s the kicker: he doesn’t need to do it.
A majority of the holdings for Campbell and a group of private Texas Tech donors in the energy industry are in the Permian Basin, which is expected to account for nearly 50 percent of all U.S. oil production in 2026.
They may as well be printing money.
The Texas Tech softball team finished national runner up. The basketball team advanced to the Elite Eight of the NCAA men’s tournament, and the football team just signed the No. 1 transfer portal class.
“The best thing that could happen to Texas Tech is the same system persists,” Campbell said. “We are gaining ground on blue blood programs because we have donor money, and people willing to put it to work. Why would I do anything to fix things long term? I have no reason to do it other than the system, and the opportunity to change the trajectory of student athletes’ lives and preserve the system long-term for more than 500,000 student athletes. This isn’t a hobby, this has become my calling.”
The unsustainable limit
There was a time when BCS and CFP were hot-button acronyms of college football. Now it’s ROI.
Return On Investment.
There are winners and losers in this new high stakes game of throwing cash at the right players. And boosters who aren’t seeing an agreeable return on their investments – success and/or individual production – are beginning to get out.
USA TODAY Sports spoke with more than 10 boosters at high profile power conference schools, and only one outside of Campbell would talk on the record about the fluid crapshoot that is NIL and paying players.
Every booster contacted said there’s a limit to the giving — and it’s arriving sooner than later.
“NIL space for boosters is like throwing money into a deep, dark hole with little to no return on the investment,” said Florida booster Gary Condron. “Nobody likes this. Not athletic directors, not coaches, not boosters. The only ones who like it are the players, and the attorneys and agents.”
Condron, 67, like Campbell, is self-made and worked multiple jobs to pay his way through college. He walked on to play baseball at Florida in the mid-1970s, and his career was cut short from a rotator cuff injury.
But he earned his degree in building construction, and not long after founded a construction firm that specializes in light industrial structures. His firm is one of the leading builders for Amazon’s distribution centers around the country.
It’s that process, Condron says, that grind and perseverance, that gets lost in the immediate satisfaction of pay for play — especially when high school players are paid before ever stepping on the field.
“I came from a family that didn’t have two nickels to rub together,” Condron said. “If I had an opportunity to eat at the training table (at Florida) it was a blessing for me. If you saw what kids get today, the hair on your neck would stand up. I don’t know how much longer I can (fund NIL) unless we get some guardrails.”
The House settlement already has begun to build some guardrails, by sheer luck or evolution. The settlement allows for private NIL deals, but has no specific language about how those contracts are written.
So boosters are taking the next move in protecting their investments. They’re using buyouts for players who leave early, and forcing schools who sign those players to pay the full terms of the contract left behind.
That simple fix – as long as a majority of power conference schools use similar contract language – will have a profound impact on controlling costs and player movement. But that’s only part of the problem.
“We have to change the economic model. Ninety percent of the people I talk to agree with that,” Campbell said. “We can easily create a model where the SEC and Big Ten make significantly more money than they do now, and where everybody else is above the poverty line. Where the rising tide lifts all boats.”
Campbell’s argument is simple: if big money and the transfer portal can help struggling programs advance to the college football holy land, why can’t that same big money from a pooled media rights contract and a standalone CFP deal help non-power conference schools save opportunities for all athletes by protecting women’s and Olympic sports?
“Why would we want to diminish opportunity?” Campbell said. ‘The goal is to create it.’
Earlier this spring, Campbell stood outside the entrance of a posh Fort Worth, Texas, hotel, trying to find a way to explain the importance of his mission. A valet pulled his late model Chevy Suburban into the half circle drive, a hard-working thorn unapologetically pushing through the beautiful parade of high-dollar European vehicles.
The reality is not lost on the moment. Money changes everything.
If Indiana, the armpit of college football for more than a century, can win 11 games in 2024 – its first double-digit win season in 126 years of the program – and advance to the CFP, why can’t Memphis?
If SMU, which hasn’t been among the college football elite since its rogue Southwest Conference days in the 1980s, hadn’t paid $200 million to join the ACC — would it have still reached the CFP last season as a member of the American Athletic Conference?
What does a billionaire businessman know about fixing college football, you ask?
“I think some people feel like if they sabotage the White House project that I’m just going to go away. Well, I’m not,” Campbell said. “I have enough money to have my own lobbying effort.”
What does a billionaire businessman know about fixing college football, you ask? Enough to know that change on the field is insignificant compared to the need for future change in all of college sports.
“I’m very confident the ideas I have are well researched and correct,” he continued. “They’re workable and won’t hurt anyone. And won’t wreak havoc on the system.”
Or the exact opposite of the last four years.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.
This post appeared first on USA TODAY
