Texas, oil and football: How Texas Tech has raised a football monster in no time at all

LUBBOCK, Texas — In February, during the grand opening of Texas Tech’s 300,000-square foot, $242 million football facility, athletic director Kirby Hocutt, delivering a speech from behind a pulpit within this goliath of a structure, gestures into the audience before him.

He identifies those responsible for not only this lavish building but the talented new roster that trains within it.

In the room of dignitaries and donors, among the more than 200 people here to celebrate what the school believes is its informal arrival as one of college football’s havenots now-turned haves, there is gobs of money: at least a half-dozen billionaires and 30 more families worth at least nine figures.

“We couldn’t have done it without you,” Hocutt says to them.

But, in a way, the responsible party lies well below this facility, deep within the Earth’s rock: a well of oil the size of the state of Florida. The Permian Basin, the largest oil field in the United States, produces more than 6 million barrels of oil per day and generates 40% of the country’s oil supply.

It fuels something else: the Texas Tech football team.

“It’s why we are so well funded. So many alumni have gone to work around this oil field,” says booster Cody Campbell, a former Tech player who sold his last three oil businesses for a combined $13 billion.

Eight months after the unveiling of that new facility, in the wake of arguably the most lucrative and aggressive recruiting effort from any program in the country, the Texas Tech football team is 8-1, ranked as the eighth-best team in the land and poised for its most momentous game in nearly two decades this Saturday when No. 7 BYU (8-0) visits in a Big 12 showdown in West Texas.

The Red Raiders are scoring in bunches and stuffing opponents. After all, they are one of only three teams that rank inside the top 10 in both total offense and total defense (the others: Indiana and Oregon). Issues that have plagued this program for years — defensive lapses and physicality up front — are no longer problems.

They are led by a genuinely gregarious Texan as coach, Joey McGuire, who fits here like a wide-brimmed hat atop the head of a cowboy. And they are funded by some of the richest oil barons in the world, a group that pooled their resources this spring in an effort to elevate this place into a different stratosphere.

They took advantage of the circumstances. This year, the old NIL era and the new revenue-share concept overlapped to create the final uncapped market for college players — a last gasp of booster-funded deals before a new enforcement entity arrived July 1.

In all, Tech donors raised a jaw-dropping $49 million from July 2024 to July 2025, much of that front-loaded cash paid to players (of all sports) before this academic year began.

And they aren’t afraid to talk about it, either.

“We’re trying to be upfront about it,” says Gary Petersen, an oil investor living in Houston and a mega-donor who, with Campbell and John Sellers, cut the biggest checks this spring.

“What’s interesting to me, in terms of money, we’re the new kids on the block,” he continues. “Texas and A&M and all the large schools have given money to their players probably forever. Now, they’re getting mad at us. ‘Texas Tech?!’”

Is this the awakening of a sleeping giant?

Is Texas Tech a next new football power within college sports?

“There are different times in college football where there is a change occurring that creates opportunity,” Campbell says. “I visited Nebraska recently. They got good when they figured out weight lifting better than anyone else.

“This is our next opportunity to raise ourselves a tier and move into the top of college football.”

‘Why not us?’

McGuire often asks that question to those around him. After all, he says, why can’t Texas Tech, with its oil riches, recruiting resources and plush facilities, join the blue bloods of college football as its newest member?

McGuire, 54, knows winning football. In the country’s most competitive state for high school football, he won three state championships in 14 seasons at Cedar Hill, a small city located just outside of Dallas.

McGuire is a recruiter and motivator — known as one of the true culture-builders within college football. With players, he’s a loveable father figure who fuels their desire to win. With donors, he’s an adept politician and fundraising whiz, extroverted and hospitable — a charmer with authenticity.

“He has not one fake bone in his body,” says Lawrence Schovanec, the school’s 72-year-old president. “We all know that NIL investing hasn’t worked at some places. The locker rooms have soured. Not here, because of Joey.”

This is sort of a dream realized for McGuire, who says he turned down the UTSA job in 2019 only to be passed over for the Baylor job a month later.

“You can’t be more lucky,” he now says. “What’s crazy is you fast forward to Year 4 and just the amount of support — the new facility, NIL, revenue-share … it’s turned into as good of a job as there is in the country.”

McGuire has established a culture here of homegrown Texas talent. In fact, Tech’s roster is loaded with Texas high school products at key positions: the team’s top passer; top two rushers; three of the top four receivers; three of the starting five offensive linemen; and four of the top five tacklers. Even many of those who transferred to the school are former Texas products who returned to their home state, such as leading 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.

However, the most significant portal additions on the roster are outsiders, most 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 pair of former all-conference MAC and American players. The team’s do-it-all safety, Cole Wisniewski, came from North Dakota State, and the team’s leader in interceptions, Brice Pollock, got here through Mississippi State.

The portal hunt last December started at a goal of signing 12 players. It finished at 17, McGuire says. According to On3Sports, the transfer class ranked No. 1 in the country.

“We hit home runs,” the coach says.

The recruiting effort was an organized outfit from several men — the evaluating mainly from general manager James Blanchard, the recruiting from McGuire and primary funding from Campbell, Sellers and Petersen.

Blanchard and company used an analytics platform in their evaluation, Big League Advantage, to project players into their system.

“We didn’t want to bring in mercenaries or were bad teammates,” says Campbell.

But perhaps the most important part was the funding — an effort that began with a Dallas-area meeting well before the December transfer portal period opened.

“It wasn’t cheap,” says Campbell, “but it wasn’t about the money we spent. It’s about how we spent it.”

In July 2024, Texas Tech’s biggest donors gathered in a private room at Shady Oaks Country Club, one of the most premier golfing destinations in the country located just west of Fort Worth.

Campbell, a club member, hosted the event to pitch his idea: Before schools begin to compensate athletes legally in a capped revenue-share system the following fall, Texas Tech, with its oil riches, could use booster-backed deals in the spring of 2025 to pay athletes just as much as any of the blue-blood powers.

Why not go all in?

At the meeting, Campbell, Sellers and Petersen committed to matching one another’s donations to the cause.

“We all sat down and said, ‘We want to win really bad,’” Petersen recalls.

A few days later, within Hocutt’s office, the donors, Blanchard, McGuire and the athletic director finalized the plans.

“Cody said, ‘Let me go raise this NIL money with the collective here and we can piggyback that on with the revenue sharing,’” McGuire recalls. “It gives us X amount of money to work with and get a team to compete at a high level.”

That “X” is about $49 million. Though a portion of that was spent on men’s basketball and other sports, the football roster accounted for the lion’s share.

Multiple power conference football and basketball programs orchestrated a similar plan of frontloading booster money this past spring. In fact, booster spending on athletes this past June was more than 800% higher than last June, according to Opendorse, an NIL platform used by dozens of collectives.

But Texas Tech outspent most of them, especially fellow Big 12 member schools, many of which are financially stressed and devoid of a billionaire donor base. Frontloading so much cash is an advantage not just this year but next year, too. It gives Texas Tech the ability to save the $20.5 million revenue-share pool allotted to schools for this academic year to be spent on next year’s roster, a new transfer class and a high school signing class this spring.

In July, from Big 12 football media day, other head coaches in the conference bemoaned the situation, lobbing not-so-subtle jabs toward Tech and its approach.

“Those people must not be planning on there being a cap because they wouldn’t be able to spend that,” said UCF coach Scott Frost.

The very next month, another offseason jab came the Red Raiders’ way.

Big 12 athletic directors voted, 15-1, to enforce an old policy related to objects thrown on the playing surface — a decision targeting the tradition from Tech fans of tossing tortillas into the air and, sometimes, onto the field or bench areas at kickoff.

McGuire says the entire situation has fueled something within the conference: “Us against everybody.”

Even national broadcasters can’t quite help themselves when it comes to Tech’s big spending.

In his opening monologue during Tuesday’s inaugural College Football Playoff selection committee rankings, ESPN personality Rece Davis identified each postseason contender with a team’s defining characteristic.

As the Texas Tech logo popped onto the screen, Davis said, “Some have arrived with audacity and the backing of money.”

Campbell says the school’s “transparency” lends itself to criticism.

“Other schools have spent as much or more than we did, but we aren’t expected to do that?” he says. “We’re not supposed to be competitive? We’re supposed to be this middling team?”

From Hocutt’s perspective, jealousy is at the root of the issue.

“When other athletic departments see the support we have from the university and the excitement and synergy from fans and they see the resources from a donors base fueling this athletic department, they are envious,” he says.

The passion for Tech goes deep with Campbell, Sellers and Petersen, and so does their connection within the oil-drilling, oil-selling and oil-investing industry.

Sellers and Campbell played football at Texas Tech under Mike Leach and co-own Double Eagle Energy Holdings, an independent oil and natural gas company. They most recently sold a portion — a portion — of the company for $4 billion.

Most of the sale was in cash.

Petersen, an Amarillo native and a second-generation Tech graduate whose son graduated from the school as well, 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 worth nearly $20 billion.

But the three are far from the only big players in this game.

Dusty Womble, the namesake for the new football facility and a retired computer technologies executive, donated in 2017 what was at the time the largest single gift to the athletic department: $20 million. Mike Wallace, an energy and oil businessman in Midland, donated two separate $5 million gifts to the new facility.

Hocutt, himself a native Texan, finds himself in one of the best situations of any athletic director in America at such a financially troubling time for so many.

After all, he says, in West Texas, there are but three things.

“Texas, oil and football.”

‘College sports are in crisis’

Off the field, whether it prefers it or not, Texas Tech is at the center of a much more significant fight playing out — one that could shape the future of college sports.

This spring, on Capitol Hill, a four-page pamphlet found its way to the offices of several lawmakers.

“College sports are in crisis,” the title reads.

The document details why and how the Big Ten and SEC are monopolizing the college sports industry by “seizing power” in the wake of court rulings that collapsed long-standing NCAA rules. The two leagues have swelled with so many big brands that they are “hoarding media money and resources and crushing smaller schools,” the pamphlet said.

The document derived from Campbell, who this year started a non-profit organization, Saving College Sports, with the purpose of overhauling its archaic model to generate more revenue for financially stressed schools who may eventually eliminate completely or, at the very least, reduce investment in Olympic and women’s sports.

Campbell’s idea is to open the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 to permit FBS conferences to consolidate their television and media-rights packages — a move that, he and others contend, will generate twice as much revenue from TV partners.

Campbell’s pamphlet has turned much more serious as of late.

He’s paid millions of dollars to run national television advertisements during college football games this season, where he speaks critically about those who are not supportive of his plan, most notably the power conference commissioners.

A close ally of President Donald Trump and an influential Republican backer, Campbell’s sway on Capitol Hill has been considerable enough that one long-time congressional staff member remarked recently, “I’ve never seen someone have such an impact here so quickly.”

In September, Campbell took his fight to the House of Representatives, helping delay a vote of the NCAA-backed SCORE Act by influencing many Republican members that it does not provide a good enough solution (it does not open the Sports Broadcasting Act).

However, two months later and after some amendments to the bill, Campbell now says he is supporting the passage of the SCORE Act, something that could happen as soon as the government returns from what is now a more than 30-day shutdown.

When or if the SCORE Act reaches the Senate — where many believe it will die without major changes — Campbell hopes the legislation will be combined with the Democrat-backed SAFE Act, a bill authored by Sen. Maria Cantwell and one that opens the Sports Broadcasting Act.

In fact, Campbell has received commitments from both leaders in the House and Senate in holding hearings on the Sports Broadcasting Act.

About a week ago, while visiting the White House, Campbell says the president asked him about college sports legislation. “It’s at the top of his mind,” he says. “I expect soon you’ll see the [Trump] administration more involved.”

While his idea would generate more revenue for the Big Ten and SEC, his concept more evenly distributes money to all FBS programs to create more competitive equity, including Big 12 schools like Texas Tech. Those pushing back against such a more even distribution — namely the Big Ten and SEC — believe something else is behind Campbell’s campaign: Texas Tech.

He bristles at such accusations. Without legislation to consolidate media rights and deliver equity, he agrees with what many predict: The most powerful conferences or, perhaps, the biggest brand schools will formally separate from all others.

“If the whole thing blows up, Tech has plenty of resources,” Campbell says. “We’d be one of the ones that make it. I’d just let it blow up if I was doing it just because of Texas Tech.”

McGuire and Hocutt are on Campbell’s side — and so are many, as it turns out, in leagues outside of the Big Ten and SEC.

In fact, several university presidents and conference commissioners from the other eight FBS leagues have held meetings not only with Campbell, but also with leaders of SMASH Capital, a group of former Disney and ESPN executives who — now working in tandem with Campbell — are pitching to administrators a concept dubbed Project Rudy. Project Rudy operationalizes a new FBS structure under a consolidated media-rights deal and a universal scheduling model, both to increase value to schools.

“I appreciate Cody spending so many resources and have the platform with the White House to bring this forward,” Hocutt says. “The best thing for Texas Tech athletics is if things stayed the way they were in the collective era, but that’s not what’s best for college athletics.”

‘People want to win’

As early as Monday, Texas Tech students began camping outside of the football stadium in preparation for Saturday’s big game.

ESPN “College GameDay” is originating 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 in droves.

Texas Tech football is back in America’s national spotlight for the first time since the now-departed Leach roamed the sideline.

“It’s going to be crazy here on Saturday,” says Schovanec, the university president entering his 10th year.

Like any school leader, Schovanec sees the athletic department as the so-called “front porch” of the academic institution. The investment into Tech football — after all, those oil dollars could go elsewhere right? — is an extension of the university’s marketing and promotional arm.

Applications to the school are up at a time when most enrollment is declining, he says. Even those athletic donors are taking part in academic fundraising too. Texas Tech is in the midst of a capital campaign that is nearing $1 billion raised from 85,000 donors over five years.

Schovanec hears about some of his presidential colleagues lamenting the state of college athletics and refusing to invest at such high levels.

He doesn’t believe them.

“You hear certain presidents say they’re not going to be all in, but on the other hand, tell me who’s not doing it?” he says. “I think people may say that they have misgivings, but when push comes to shove, people want to win.”

Here, in this West Texas town, they want to win.

How badly? Hocutt provides another example.

The school recently created a new donor group called the Athletic Director Circle. A family must commit to a one-time seven-figure donation.

The school set a goal of 20 commitments. In just a few short months, the fundraising effort has already gained 25 members who have committed more than $35 million.

Hocutt chuckles again.

“Texas. Oil. And football.”

Texas, oil and football: How Texas Tech has raised a football monster in no time at all

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