Texas Tech’s general counsel has advised the university to skip signing a new College Sports Commission enforcement agreement—because apparently the Big 12’s hottest NIL spender doesn’t feel like being told what to do. The Power 4 conferences sent out an 11-page “pretty please follow the rules” contract requiring schools to abide by new enforcement decisions tied to the House settlement. Penalties for noncompliance include losing revenue and getting banned from postseason play, but Tech seems unfazed. When you’re 10–1 and swimming in booster cash, what’s a little postseason ban between friends?
In a memo to board chairman Cody Campbell—yes, that Cody Campbell, billionaire booster and human ATM of Red Raider athletics—Tech’s counsel objected to a laundry list of clauses, including one that allows the CSC to make up new rules whenever it feels like it and apply them retroactively. Retroactive punishment? In college sports? Unheard of. He also bristled at a clause that could make Tech responsible if, say, the Texas Attorney General decided to pick a fight with the CSC. Considering how often Texas officials sue the federal government before breakfast, that’s probably a fair concern.
Campbell, meanwhile, is sitting on decades of goodwill after helping funnel tens of millions into Tech’s NIL ecosystem—money that kept the now-disbanded Matador Club busy front-loading payments before the new clearinghouse rules kicked in. Tech athletes will reportedly rake in $55 million this year, which definitely has nothing to do with Campbell wanting Tech to avoid yet another layer of oversight that might look at all that spending and say, “Uh, guys?”
The CSC insists signing the agreement is just a “logical next step” toward enforcing the revenue-sharing system schools already opted into. Logical for them, maybe. But here in West Texas, “logical next step” tends to translate to “something someone else wants us to do,” which historically has not gone over well.
If the CSC really wants Tech to fall in line, they might try the only thing Lubbock folks fear more than regulation: threatening to cut the football budget.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6829627/2025/11/22/house-settlement-enforcement-signing-texas-tech/
