“For Texas Tech, the best thing that could happen is for everything to remain chaotic,” he said.
Advertisement
But Campbell, an oilman by trade and a problem solver at heart, has a clear vision of where college sports are and where they need to go if they want to survive beyond, say, 2030.
In an interview with The Associated Press before Tech’s college football playoff game against Oregon, Campbell argued that Congress needs to create a new entity that can oversee college sports. Your main focus? Maximize income.
“We’ve professionalized the cost side of college sports,” he said. “But we’re still running this revenue-generating program for fans.”
The idea of creating a new agency is one of the talking points that thrust Campbell into the national conversation about how to run an industry that now pays players millions but also risks bankrupting athletic departments and destroying smaller sports funded by football and basketball.
Advertisement
In a series of television ads aired during college football games (which some networks briefly refused to air), Campbell pushed for Congress to rewrite the 64-year-old law that prevents college conferences from pooling their television rights to sell them as a single unit, as leagues like the NFL and NBA do.
He believes a smarter TV structure could net an additional $7 billion a year. In the interview with AP, he suggested that the solution is more complex than simply changing the law, tearing up current agreements and starting over.
“Congress needs to establish a system of government that allows them to make business decisions so they can maximize their value,” Campbell said of university leadership.
He sees an entity with not just one commissioner, but a handful, all of whom run their individual sports and make their own decisions about media rights.
Advertisement
Campbell, a man who disdains the status quo and those who defend it (think conference commissioners, some athletic directors and school presidents), challenges the idea that his vision will extract power from all those people. If they put more money in their pockets, he explains, everyone will be stronger.
The SEC’s Greg Sankey has argued that Campbell’s views “reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the realities of college athletics.”
Campbell’s response to commissioners and others criticizing him: “I would say, ‘How many private equity deals have you done?’ I’ve done a dozen or more. ‘How many times have you issued a public bond or financed a multimillion-dollar project?’ I’ve done it enough. Did you actually play major college football?
A West Texas Negotiator
Advertisement
Campbell, who grew up in the West Texas city of Canyon, was an all-conference offensive lineman for the Red Raiders in the early 2000s and spent 2005 with the Indianapolis Colts.
He made his money through a combination of real estate and oil businesses. According to ESPN, he and his partner, John Sellers, sold four versions of their company, Double Eagle Energy, for a total of about $13 billion.
The money has allowed Campbell to almost single-handedly change the fortunes of Texas Tech athletics. He donated $25 million to help rebuild Texas Tech’s football stadium. He leads The Matador Club, the collective that took advantage of loose regulation in the early days of the NIL to reportedly funnel more than $60 million to Texas Tech players starting in 2022.
“I know some of the commissioners haven’t necessarily agreed with them and I don’t think he sees the big picture,” Red Raiders coach Joey McGuire said. “But when you’re in the room, you’ll understand. He’s smarter than you.”
Advertisement
Private equity is only a short-term solution
It wasn’t so much the money, but the experience he gained raising money that Campbell believes makes him fit to help shape college sports.
For example, he sees the role of private investment (which is grabbing headlines in the Big Ten, the Big 12, the University of Utah and elsewhere) as a bridge to a day when conferences maximize their media rights. It is not, he says, a permanent solution, especially with the way conferences are being approached.
“It’s basically a payday loan, the way these things are structured,” Campbell said. “They don’t really solve the fundamental problem.”
Advertisement
Congress has answers but not the right ones
Campbell presents himself as a supporter of the SCORE Act, legislation seeking to regulate college sports that has languished in Congress for a year. although he disagrees with its key points and sees it more as a starting point than a final product.
“I don’t think many people who have followed sports for a while think that the NCAA is the right entity to be given a tremendous amount of additional power to override state law and be exempt from any type of lawsuits,” he said, highlighting two key elements proposed by the bill.
He believes a new entity could build that trust and says he’s pushing this agenda not to benefit Texas Tech (all Texas schools have big boosters who can write big checks under any rule, he says), but because of what the university and college sports did for him.
Advertisement
The belief that college sports are bipartisan
Taking advantage of the reality that football and basketball fund everything in college sports, Campbell sees television as the best way to save it all.
He says tapping into that extra $7 billion a year will fund women’s and Olympic sports, which have become increasingly vulnerable as attention and resources shift to soccer.
Campbell, a reliable Republican fundraiser, says he is aligned with President Donald Trump, who signed an executive order called “Save College Sports,” part of which calls for protecting and expanding women’s and nonprofit sports.
Advertisement
However, Campbell sees no conflict with the fact that the reworking of the TV deal aligns more closely with a bill proposed by a Democrat. Rewriting the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 was the focus of legislation proposed by Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.
“I know he generally supports two things,” Cantwell said in a previous interview with the AP. “One is to make sure the two major (conferences) don’t get all the money. And second, I think he sees this as a way to equalize resources across all schools so we can still have ‘any given Saturday.'”
Campbell said it’s realistic. He knows Congress works slowly and doesn’t always have sports in mind. However, his faith in finding a solution is not diminished by this. He cited internal polling showing that more than 85% of Americans “want women’s sports and Olympic sports to be preserved.”
“And 85% of Americans don’t agree on anything,” he said. “The reality is that if we don’t make some reforms and we’re not careful, those sports are going to disappear.”
Advertisement
___
Receive poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 all season long. Register here. AP College Football: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-football