LUBBOCK, Texas — Back in February, during the official inauguration of Texas Tech’s expansive 300,000-square foot, $242 million gridiron complex, athletic director Kirby Hocutt, delivering a speech from a dais within this colossal structure, signals toward the assemblage before him.
He acknowledges those responsible for not just this opulent building but the gifted new team that utilizes it for training.
In the gathering of notables and benefactors, among the more than 200 individuals present to commemorate what the institution considers its unofficial transformation as one of college football’s previously deprived now-become affluent, there is abundant wealth: a minimum of a half-dozen billionaires and 30 additional families possessing a net worth of at least nine figures.
“We couldn’t have achieved this without your support,” Hocutt expresses to them.
However, in a sense, the accountable entity resides far beneath this facility, deep within the Earth’s crust: an oil reserve rivaling the size of Florida. The Permian Basin, the largest oil field in the United States, yields over 6 million barrels of oil each day and contributes 40% of the nation’s oil production.
It energizes something more: the Texas Tech gridiron squad.
“It’s the reason for our robust funding. Numerous alumni have pursued careers surrounding this oil field,” remarks booster Cody Campbell, a former Tech player who divested his latest three oil ventures for a collective $13 billion.
Eight months following the introduction of that new facility, subsequent to what is arguably the most financially rewarding and forceful recruitment initiative from any program nationwide, the Texas Tech football team boasts an 8-1 record, ranks as the eighth-best team nationally, and anticipates its most significant contest in nearly two decades this Saturday when No. 7 BYU (8-0) arrives for a Big 12 confrontation in West Texas.
The Red Raiders are racking up points and stifling adversaries. Indeed, they stand as one of only three teams to rank within the top 10 in both total offense and total defense (alongside Indiana and Oregon). Deficiencies that have persistently afflicted this program for years — defensive vulnerabilities and a lack of physical presence up front — are no longer concerns.
They are guided by a genuinely affable Texan as coach, Joey McGuire, who integrates seamlessly here like a wide-brimmed hat upon a cowboy’s head. And they are financed by some of the wealthiest oil magnates globally, a collective that consolidated their resources this spring to elevate this institution into an altered realm.
They capitalized on the prevailing circumstances. This year, the bygone NIL era and the nascent revenue-share concept intersected to establish the ultimate unrestricted market for college athletes — a concluding surge of booster-funded arrangements before a fresh enforcement body arrived on July 1.
Overall, Tech donors amassed an astonishing $49 million from July 2024 to July 2025, with a substantial portion of this front-loaded capital allocated to players (across all sports) before the commencement of this academic year.
And they are not hesitant to discuss it either.
“We’re endeavoring to be transparent about it,” states Gary Petersen, a Houston-based oil investor and a significant benefactor who, alongside Campbell and John Sellers, contributed the most substantial sums this spring.
“What intrigues me, regarding finances, is that we’re the newcomers,” he continues. “Texas and A&M and all the prominent schools have likely been compensating their players indefinitely. Now, they’re expressing frustration towards us. ‘Texas Tech?!’”
Is this the resurgence of a dormant force?
Is Texas Tech emerging as a future football powerhouse within collegiate athletics?
“There exist certain junctures in college football where a transformation arises, generating opportunity,” Campbell observes. “I recently visited Nebraska. They excelled when they mastered weightlifting more effectively than anyone else.
“This constitutes our subsequent opportunity to ascend a tier and position ourselves at the summit of college football.”
‘Why not us?’
McGuire frequently poses this question to those around him. Ultimately, he argues, why can’t Texas Tech, with its petroleum wealth, recruiting capabilities, and luxurious facilities, join the elite echelon of college football as its newest addition?
McGuire, 54, possesses a proven track record in victorious football. Within the nation’s most competitive state for high school football, he secured three state championships across 14 seasons at Cedar Hill, a modest city situated just outside of Fort Worth.
McGuire serves as a recruiter and motivator — recognized as a genuine architect of culture within college football. With players, he embodies a cherished paternal figure who ignites their aspiration to triumph. With donors, he functions as a skillful politician and fundraising adept, extroverted and approachable — a captivating individual of authenticity.
“He possesses not a single insincere trait,” affirms Lawrence Schovanec, the institution’s 72-year-old president. “We all acknowledge that NIL investments have proven ineffective in certain contexts. Locker room morale has deteriorated. This is not the case here, due to Joey’s influence.”
This represents a realization of sorts for McGuire, who indicates he declined the UTSA position in 2019 only to be overlooked for the Baylor role a month subsequently.
“One couldn’t be more fortunate,” he now concedes. “What’s remarkable is the rapid progression to Year 4 and the sheer extent of support — the novel facility, NIL initiatives, revenue-sharing arrangements…it has evolved into a position as enviable as any nationwide.”
McGuire has cultivated a culture rooted in homegrown Texas talent. Indeed, Tech’s roster is replete with Texas high school graduates in pivotal roles: the team’s leading passer; top two rushers; three of the top four receivers; three of the starting five offensive linemen; and four of the top five tacklers. Moreover, numerous individuals who transferred to the school are former Texas residents who have returned to their home state, such as prominent wideout and former Florida receiver Caleb Douglas, starting lineman and former North Carolina Tar Heel Howard Sampson, and top tackler and ex-Virginia linebacker Jacob Rodriguez.
Nevertheless, the most impactful portal additions to the roster are external recruits, notably the nation’s sack leader in Stanford transfer David Bailey and fellow rush end Romello Height, previously of Georgia Tech. The starting offensive line features a duo of former all-conference MAC and American players. The team’s versatile safety, Cole Wisniewski, arrived from North Dakota State, and the team’s interceptions leader, Brice Pollock, transitioned here from Mississippi State.
The portal pursuit last December commenced with a target of securing 12 players. It concluded with 17, according to McGuire. As per On3Sports, the transfer class was ranked No. 1 nationally.
“We achieved remarkable success,” the coach declares.
The recruiting endeavor was a coordinated operation involving several individuals — with evaluations primarily conducted by general manager James Blanchard, recruiting overseen by McGuire, and funding provided by Campbell, Sellers, and Petersen.
Blanchard and his team utilized an analytics platform in their assessment, Big League Advantage, to project players into their system.
“We aimed to avoid acquiring mercenaries or individuals with detrimental team dynamics,” states Campbell.
However, perhaps the most vital aspect was the financial backing — an initiative that commenced with a gathering in the Dallas area well in advance of the December transfer portal window.
“It wasn’t inexpensive,” Campbell concedes, “but it wasn’t about the expenditure of funds. It was about the judicious allocation of resources.”
In July 2024, Texas Tech’s most prominent benefactors convened in a private setting at Shady Oaks Country Club, a premier golfing destination located just west of Fort Worth.
Campbell, a club member, hosted the event to promote his concept: Before institutions commence compensating athletes legally within a capped revenue-sharing framework the following autumn, Texas Tech, leveraging its oil reserves, could utilize booster-supported arrangements in the spring of 2025 to remunerate athletes comparably to any of the elite programs.
Why not fully commit?
During the meeting, Campbell, Sellers, and Petersen pledged to match each other’s contributions to the cause.
“We all engaged in a discussion and affirmed, ‘We harbor an intense desire to achieve victory,’” Petersen recalls.
A few days subsequently, within Hocutt’s office, the donors, Blanchard, McGuire, and the athletic director finalized the plans.
“Cody volunteered, ‘Allow me to raise these NIL funds in conjunction with the collective, and we can integrate that with revenue sharing,’” McGuire recounts. “This provides us with a predetermined sum of capital to operate with and assemble a team capable of competing at an elevated level.”
That predetermined sum is approximately $49 million, according to Petersen. Although a portion of this was allocated to men’s basketball and other sports, the football roster accounted for the predominant share.
Numerous power conference football and basketball programs orchestrated a comparable strategy of frontloading booster funds this past spring. In fact, booster expenditures on athletes this past June exceeded the figures from the previous June by more than 800%, as reported by Opendorse, an NIL platform utilized by numerous collectives.
However, Texas Tech outspent the majority of them, particularly fellow Big 12 member schools, many of which are financially strained and lack a substantial donor base of billionaires. Preloading such a considerable amount of capital presents an advantage not only this year but also in the future. It empowers Texas Tech to conserve the $20.5 million revenue-sharing pool allocated to institutions for this academic year for utilization on the subsequent year’s roster, a new transfer class, and a high school signing class this spring.
In July, during Big 12 football media day, other head coaches within the conference voiced concerns regarding the situation, directing subtly critical remarks toward Tech and its methodology.
“Those individuals must not be anticipating a cap, as they would be unable to expend that amount,” remarked UCF coach Scott Frost.
The subsequent month, another offseason rebuke was directed toward the Red Raiders.
Big 12 athletic directors voted, by a margin of 15-1, to enforce a longstanding policy pertaining to objects projected onto the playing surface — a decision targeting the tradition among Tech fans of launching tortillas into the air and, occasionally, onto the field or bench areas at kickoff.
McGuire suggests that the entire scenario has fostered a sense of unity within the conference: “Us against the collective.”
Even national broadcasters are unable to completely refrain from commenting on Tech’s substantial expenditures.
In his introductory monologue during Tuesday’s inaugural College Football Playoff selection committee rankings, ESPN personality Rece Davis identified each postseason contender with a defining characteristic of the team.
As the Texas Tech logo appeared on the screen, Davis declared, “Certain programs have emerged with audacity and the backing of capital.”
Campbell posits that the institution’s “transparency” renders it susceptible to criticism.
“Other schools have allocated as much or more than we have, but we are not expected to do so?” he questions. “Are we not entitled to be competitive? Are we destined to remain a mediocre team?”
From Hocutt’s perspective, envy underlies the issue.
“When other athletic departments observe the support we receive from the university, the enthusiasm and synergy from fans, and the resources from a donor base fueling this athletic department, they experience envy,” he asserts.
The passion for Tech runs deep within Campbell, Sellers, and Petersen, as does their involvement within the oil-drilling, oil-selling, and oil-investing industries.
Sellers and Campbell were football teammates at Texas Tech under Mike Leach and co-own Double Eagle Energy Holdings, an independent oil and natural gas enterprise. They recently divested a portion — a portion — of the company for $4 billion.
The majority of the transaction was conducted in cash.
Petersen, an Amarillo native and a second-generation Tech graduate whose son also graduated from the institution, owns EnCap Investments, a private-equity firm specializing in the oil and gas industry whose firm actually backs Double Eagle.
EnCap’s total assets are valued at nearly $20 billion.
However, these three individuals are far from being the sole prominent figures in this endeavor.
Dusty Womble, the namesake of the new football facility and a retired computer technologies executive, donated $20 million in 2017, which at the time constituted the largest single gift to the athletic department. Mike Wallace, an energy and oil businessman in Midland, contributed two separate gifts of $5 million each to the new facility.
Hocutt, himself a native Texan, finds himself in one of the most favorable positions of any athletic director in America during such a financially precarious period for numerous institutions.
Ultimately, he contends, West Texas encompasses merely three components.
“Texas, oil, and football.”
‘College sports are in crisis’
Beyond the playing field, whether it welcomes it or not, Texas Tech resides at the epicenter of a significantly more extensive battle unfolding — one that possesses the potential to shape the trajectory of college athletics.
This spring, on Capitol Hill, a four-page booklet found its way into the offices of numerous legislators.
“College sports are in crisis,” the title proclaimed.
The document elaborates on the rationale and methodology behind the Big Ten and SEC’s monopolization of the college sports industry through the “seizure of power” in the aftermath of court rulings that dissolved longstanding NCAA regulations. The two leagues have expanded with numerous prominent brands to the extent that they are “amassing media revenue and resources while crushing smaller institutions,” the pamphlet asserted.
The document originated from Campbell, who this year established a non-profit organization, Saving College Sports, with the objective of overhauling its archaic model to generate increased revenue for financially struggling institutions that may ultimately eliminate completely or, at the very least, curtail investment in Olympic and women’s sports.
Campbell’s proposition entails opening the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 to permit FBS conferences to consolidate their television and media-rights packages — a maneuver that he and others contend will generate twice as much revenue from TV partners.
Campbell’s pamphlet has assumed a considerably more serious tone of late.
He has expended millions of dollars to broadcast national television advertisements during college football games this season, where he speaks critically about individuals who do not endorse his plan, notably the power conference commissioners.
As a close associate of President Donald Trump and an influential Republican supporter, Campbell’s influence on Capitol Hill has been substantial enough that one longtime congressional staff member recently remarked, “I’ve never observed an individual exert such an impact here so swiftly.”
In September, Campbell carried his campaign to the House of Representatives, assisting in delaying a vote on the NCAA-backed SCORE Act by influencing numerous Republican members that it does not furnish an adequate solution (it does not open the Sports Broadcasting Act).
However, two months subsequently and following several amendments to the bill, Campbell now asserts his support for the passage of the SCORE Act, an event that could transpire as soon as the government returns from what has now exceeded a 30-day shutdown.
If or when the SCORE Act reaches the Senate — where numerous individuals anticipate its demise without substantial modifications — Campbell hopes that the legislation will be conjoined with the Democrat-backed SAFE Act, a bill authored by Sen. Maria Cantwell and one that opens the Sports Broadcasting Act.
Indeed, Campbell has secured commitments from leaders in both the House and Senate to conduct hearings on the Sports Broadcasting Act.
Approximately a week prior, while visiting the White House, Campbell indicates that the president inquired about college sports legislation. “It’s foremost in his thoughts,” he asserts. “I anticipate that you will soon witness heightened involvement from the [Trump] administration.”
While his concept would generate increased revenue for the Big Ten and SEC, his strategy more equitably distributes funds to all FBS programs to foster greater competitive balance, including Big 12 schools such as Texas Tech. Those opposing such a more even distribution — namely the Big Ten and SEC — suspect an ulterior motive behind Campbell’s campaign: Texas Tech.
He expresses irritation at such allegations. Absent legislation to consolidate media rights and ensure equity, he concurs with prevailing predictions: The most dominant conferences or, perhaps, the most prominent brand schools will formally separate from all others.
“If the entire structure collapses, Tech possesses ample resources,” Campbell asserts. “We would be among those who persevere. I would simply permit it to collapse if I were acting solely in the interests of Texas Tech.”
McGuire and Hocutt are aligned with Campbell — as are numerous individuals, as it transpires, in leagues outside of the Big Ten and SEC.
In fact, numerous university presidents and conference commissioners from the other eight FBS leagues have convened meetings not only with Campbell but also with leaders of SMASH Capital, a group of former Disney and ESPN executives who — now collaborating with Campbell — are pitching to administrators a concept dubbed Project Rudy. Project Rudy operationalizes a new FBS structure under a consolidated media-rights agreement and a universal scheduling model, both to augment value for institutions.
“I appreciate Cody’s dedication of significant resources and his utilization of the platform with the White House to advance this initiative,” Hocutt observes. “The most advantageous outcome for Texas Tech athletics would be the perpetuation of the existing system from the collective era, but that is not conducive to the well-being of college athletics.”
‘People want to win’
As early as Monday, Texas Tech students commenced camping outside the football stadium in anticipation of Saturday’s pivotal game.
ESPN “College GameDay” is broadcasting live from Lubbock. The 11 a.m. local time kickoff is slated for an ABC national telecast. The game is sold out. And the private jets are scheduled to arrive en masse.
Texas Tech football has reclaimed its position in America’s national spotlight for the first time since the now-departed Leach patrolled the sideline.
“It’s going to be an extraordinary scene here on Saturday,” predicts Schovanec, the university president entering his 10th year in office.
Similar to any institutional leader, Schovanec views the athletic department as the so-called “front porch” of the academic institution. The investment in Tech football — after all, those oil revenues could be allocated elsewhere, could they not? — is an extension of the university’s marketing and promotional apparatus.
Applications to the school have increased during a period when overall enrollment is declining, he notes. Moreover, those athletic donors are also participating in academic fundraising initiatives. Texas Tech is engaged in a capital campaign that has nearly reached $1 billion raised from 85,000 donors over five years.
Schovanec is aware of certain presidential colleagues lamenting the condition of college athletics and declining to invest at such elevated levels.
He expresses skepticism toward their claims.
“You hear certain presidents proclaim their reluctance to fully commit, but on the contrary, can you identify any who are not participating?” he asks. “I believe individuals may express misgivings, but when the moment of truth arrives, they seek victory.”
Here, within this West Texas city, they aspire to triumph.
To what extent? Hocutt provides another illustration.
The school recently established a novel donor group designated the Athletic Director Circle. A family is required to commit to a one-time seven-figure donation.
The school established a target of securing 20 commitments. In a relatively brief span of months, the fundraising campaign has already attracted 25 members who have pledged over $35 million.
Hocutt chuckles again.
“Texas. Oil. And football.”
