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The opening was as big as West Texas. And when a tight group of Texas Tech power brokers saw it last summer, their football and financial instincts kicked in. They ran to daylight.
Included in what turned out to be a football summit like no other was Gary Petersen, founder of EnCap Investments, Cody Campbell, a board of regents member, and his partner in Double Eagle Energy Holdings, John Sellers. Eventually, football coach Joey McGuire and his No. 2, general manager James Blanchard, were folded in. Throw in a couple of attorneys and you’ve got yourself the hatching of an idea to remake a world.
Or at least a world as it extended to the imaginations of these Red Raider dreamers.
“Let’s break down the House [v. NCAA] settlement,” Campbell said at the time. “What do we think is going to happen?”
What was going to happen was a bit of mayhem and opportunity for a football program that last won an outright conference championship 70 years ago.
What has occurred since that meeting is a study in American capitalism and Texas Tech opportunism. Beginning July 1 when the $20.5 million House v. NCAA revenue share piece could become available, schools will essentially have to justify paying players anything over $600. A fair market value component has been added to revenue sharing oversight. Those two elements themselves suggest at least some sort of cap on what players can earn.
Until then? That’s what that meeting was about.
NCAA president Charlie Baker hopes for ‘saner’ landscape after House v. NCAA settlement approval
It was about how to identify the best available players in the transfer portal in the most efficient way possible. Money, it was essentially decided, was no object. “All in” was the motto.
“It speaks to our ambitions and our expectations,” Campbell said. “We’re not planning on being left behind.”
Texas Tech football on the right track
Momentum is building in West Texas like a windstorm. McGuire’s Red Raiders have won six conference games for the first time since 2008. Tech basketball is in the Sweet 16 for the fourth time in eight seasons, this time under Grant McCasland. But maybe most importantly, Patrick Mahomes is making Texas Tech a national program — at least in terms of apparel hype — with his overwhelming celebrity and a $5 million donation last year.
As for that meeting last year? Tech has landed the No. 3 portal class, according to 247Sports. The ambition is evident and it is bold.
“We should be the most talented team in the Big 12 this year,” said Campbell, a billionaire who is head of Tech’s Matador Club collective. “As I tell people, the ball is shaped funny … we may not win every game. [But] we’ll be physically able to win every game.”
With their recruiting, research and dollars, the Red Raiders have snagged No. 3 transfer offensive lineman, the No. 6 defensive lineman, the No. 6 tight end, the No. 7 running back as well as No. 4 kicker.
ESPN reported the cash outlay for the class at $10 million. In “each position of need,” Campbell said Tech got the No. 1 player on its board.
“We went out and did it,” he added. “It worked even better than I thought it would. The three of us [plus Petersen and Sellers] agreed to backstop what it took to do it.”
A capital campaign has raised $400 million. Mahomes’ donation went toward the new $242 million Dusty Womble Football Center in the south end zone. There have been several stadium renovations in the last eight years.
No less of an authority than Josh Pate, who just returned from a visit to the football program at Tech, spoke to the quality of the upgrades.
“Texas Tech’s new facilities are on par with the best I’ve seen in all of college football,” Pate said. “Incredible.”
Enrollment is up 9%. More important to this conversation: Arizona State, picked to finish at the bottom of last year’s preseason media poll, showed the world that anyone can win the Big 12. Suddenly, Texas Tech is positioned be next — financially, athletically, even geographically to take the next step in this historic investment.
You already know Texas Tech isn’t the only school going all in. Last fall, Michigan went from a conservative portal approach to reportedly spending $10 million on the nation’s No. 1 recruit, flipping QB Bryce Underwood from LSU.
Ohio State famously spent $20 million on last year’s roster. When it won the national championship, that was a proof of concept like no other. But it was also before the reality of July 1 had set in.
Deals struck now with players will be grandfathered to their conclusion without being impacted by that $20.5 million cap, the clearinghouse or fair market value scrutiny.
“We set it up to where there was no funny business,” Campbell said. “There was complete transparency on what they were going to be paid. There were documents. Our attorneys helped us develop those.”
Before anything related to July 1 hits, we still live in a capitalistic world where you’re worth what someone will pay you. You think $10 million is too much for a transfer class? Bill Belichick is making $10 million per year himself at North Carolina having never coached a snap in college football. Yeah, yeah, yeah … the Super Bowls. But Tech’s gambit at least focuses on the players as the foundation.
“8-5 is not the same as a national championship, but you see the progress and progression,” Texas Tech president Lawrence Schovanec said. “Now you’re seeing the impact of that investment. The winning will come. The coaches know it must.”
Texas Tech basketball has national title aspirations
McCasland is among those coaches. He is the second Red Raiders coach since Chris Beard took the Red Raiders to the 2019 Final Four, and he is armed with his own band of transfers. Forwards Darrion Williams and JT Toppin are both former Mountain West Freshmen of the Year. Super senior guard Kerwin Walton came from North Carolina.
“When you come from a blueblood, you don’t expect the fans base to be any better,” Walton said. “When it comes to Texas Tech, it’s just as good, if not better.”
Williams and teammate Chance McMillian are going home to San Francisco for Thursday night’s Sweet 16 game against Arkansas. Williams grew up in nearby Vallejo, California, while McMillian grew up 90 miles away in Sacramento.
The pair spent Christmas watching the Warriors host the Lakers at the Chase Center. Williams with his Lebron James jersey and McMillian with his Steph Curry jersey.
“I think it’s a culture around us and football,” Williams said. “You can throw as much money around was you want around, but it doesn’t mean you’re going to go win games. In here, we don’t talk about money. We just want to go win.”
When McCasland arrived in 2023 from North Texas, the Tech roster was in limbo. Previous coach Mark Adams was suspended March 6 of that year for making racially sensitive remarks. He resigned three days later. North Texas, with McCasland, didn’t end the season until winning the NIT on March 30.
“Those guys wanted to stay,” the coach said of the remaining Red Raiders. “To have that long, to have that many people that can mess with you, to have that much time to get options. They wanted to figure out how they can stay.”
“There is a real love and passion that our guys feel. I think that’s unique in Texas for basketball. Everybody loves football. But to be in a place that loves basketball in Texas …”
It shows. Until Texas recently opened the Moody Center, Tech’s United Supermarkets Arena (15,300) was the largest college basketball arena in the Lone Star State. If Tech continues to win, it won’t be an offshoot of “all in” — it will be yet another example.
“God forbid we get to San Antonio,” Dusty Womble said of a possible Final Four. “I’m not sure the River Walk is prepared for what might happen there.”
Resources pay dividends
Womble is another pillar in this effort. Another regent member, Womble started Interactive Computer Designs while still a Tech student in 1980. In 1998, he sold the company to Tyler Technologies. Tyler grew to a market cap of $9 billion with more than 5,000 employees.
Consider him one of the faces that is going to now lead college sports into the future.
“From Ohio State to Texas to Texas A&M to us to SMU, all the [schools] are looking at each other saying, ‘This doesn’t work,'” Womble said. “There’s a better way to do it that takes care of the athletes, that takes care of Title IX issue. We need some leadership out there. I don’t think the conference commissioners are currently charged with figuring that out.”
There were indications Tech was doing something right. Notre Dame came hard after Blanchard, considered one of the best GMs in the game. He stayed with his contract being bumped up to $1.5 million per year.
Former Red Raiders coach Mike Leach’s approach to coaching football left bread crumbs for the current administration to sharpen Texas Tech’s aim in this financial endeavor.
“His ability to say, ‘We don’t have better athletes than you have, we can have a better scheme than you have. We’re going to change the way the game is played,” Womble summed up. “Not many coaches can go back and say, ‘We changed the way the game was played.'”
Texas Tech’s modern-day initiative is similar, along with a little bit of German. That’s one of the marketing schemes that came to the mind of Matt Dewey. Texas Tech’s head of marketing and communications had been at his current position for six months in 2020 when he noticed a Kansas City Chiefs promotional film of Patrick Mahomes.
“They kind of skipped Texas Tech,” Dewey recalled.
Tapping into the Patrick Mahomes advantage
That gave him an idea. Using Mahomes as a fulcrum, why not forge a partnership between the school, the quarterback and the Chiefs? Today, you’ll see the Texas Tech logo on the Chiefs’ main scoreboard. There is Tech advertising on the ribbon scoreboards. A social media post sent at kickoff of each Chiefs game features Mahomes and Texas Tech.
It helps that Tech regent Michael Lewis lives near Chiefs owner Clark Hunt in Dallas. The partnership is so tight now that Texas Tech instructors from the school’s language department helped teach a crash course in German to Chiefs staff and administration before the team played in Frankfurt in 2023.
The school’s $1 million investment in the Chiefs advertising is recouped by the 30-40 Kansas City area students who now paid out-of-state tuition to attend Tech, according to Schovanec.
“The return on investment is worth it,” he said.
How can it not be? Mahomes is invested in his alma mater unlike no other Power Five athlete since perhaps Michael Jordan at North Carolina.
The quarterback’s 10-year contract with Adidas features an official shoe, uniform and other apparel branded with the Mahomes “Gladiator” logo.
After sinking a 94-foot putt in a halftime promotion at a Tech basketball game, senior Blake Porter got another surprise. Mahomes announced he would cover Porter’s tuition next fall.
“When there is even a rumor he is going to be back in town for a game, people start to go crazy” Dewey said. “I’ve never been around anything quite like it.”
Part of how Tech got to this moment is buried deep in the ground. Lubbock is located just north of the Permian Basin, the highest-producing oil field in the world.
“It is the driving factor behind our ability to raise money,” Campbell said.
College athletics in the state of Texas and oil have been linked forever. Texas A&M used an uptick in the oil market and the momentum created by Johnny Manziel’s Heisman in 2012 to pour $500 million into the renovation of Kyle Field. After years of mediocrity, Texas is finally repositioning itself as a college football power. TCU played for a national championship two years ago.
Houston infused its athletics with enough money that it was attractive when the Big 12 expanded. Since 2015, the Cougars have been to a New Year’s Six bowl and is playing in its sixth straight Sweet 16.
No surprise, then, that Tech is not shy about its current ambitions.
“We’re resetting college athletics … We really are in a transformational time. This is a unique opportunity for us,” Dewey said. “To not take advantage would be a big miss.”
“Not everybody knows where Lubbock is on a map,” he added. “They know who Patrick Mahomes is.”
