Texas Tech super-booster Cody Campbell will join Nick Saban on President Donald Trump's commission to examine college athletics, sources told FootballScoop on Wednesday. Yahoo's Ross Dellenger first reported the news.
When the committee was first announced earlier Wednesday, it was reported that "prominent businesspeople with deep connections to college football" would join along with Saban's anticipated presence, and Campbell indeed has a deep connection to the game.
A Texas Tech offensive lineman under Mike Leach, Campbell went into the oil business after his brief NFL career and made a fortune. In February, Campbell and his partner sold their firm Double Eagle for $4 billion.
Campbell has also spearheaded Texas Tech's efforts in NIL. He co-founded Texas Tech's collective The Matador Club. In November, when a Red Raiders fan asked Campbell to purchase a new offensive line for Texas Tech in the transfer portal, Campbell infamously responded, "I will." The Red Raiders signed the No. 2 transfer class in college football, according to the 247Sports database.
Campbell's interests in the NIL space extend beyond doing his part to get his alma mater a Big 12 championship and a College Football Playoff berth, though.
Since January, Campbell has written three columns in the conservative publication The Federalist on the state of college athletics. Those columns were titled:
Only Congress and the President Can Save College Sports
D.C. Decision Makers Could Kill College Sports By Giving NCAA Big Dogs a Legal Monopoly
The Saga of Tennessee's Nico Iamaleava Is The Latest Expression of the Brokenness of College Sports
In the second column, Campbell wrote:
The top 40 most-viewed college football programs already hog 89.3 percent of TV eyeballs and 95 percent of media cash. Give the Autonomy Four (especially the Big 10 and SEC) a free antitrust hall pass, and they’ll build a super conference, a gilded monopoly that starves everyone else of the revenue needed to provide opportunity to more than 500,000 student athletes per year. Of 134 FBS schools, 90 or more could lose funding for Olympic sports, women’s teams, and even football itself (not to mention the FCS and Division II). Local towns could crumble. Smaller colleges would fade. College sports would shrink from a national treasure to an elite clique, and countless dreams would be crushed.
Campbell and Saban approach the issue of our time from the same direction, but it remains to be seen how much influence their commission will have.