If you spent a good chunk of Labor Day weekend watching football on television, it would have been hard to miss an ad that starts with a man holding a ball in an empty stadium, warning about the fragile state of college sports.

“Dramatic changes are causing nearly every athletic department in America to operate in the red, forcing cuts. Putting women’s sports and Olympic dreams in immediate danger,” says Cody Campbell, a former Texas Tech offensive lineman turned billionaire booster who is quickly becoming a prominent voice in college sports.

Campbell has started a group called “Saving College Sports” and was recently named a member of the Presidential Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition by President Donald Trump. The executive order President Trump signed last month aimed at solving the problems Campbell believes college sports are facing has Campbell’s fingerprints all over it.

But the core of Campbell’s plan involves changing the Sports Broadcasting Act passed in 1961.

For those following the dramatic evolution of college sports over the past few years, Campbell and his message might be familiar, if a little vague.

For many, though, the commercials are coming from out of nowhere.

“Who is this guy and what is he talking about?” was the reaction of a lot of sports fans last weekend.

Allow us to try to explain.

Who is this guy?

Campbell played at Texas Tech in the early 2000s and was a member of late coach Mike Leach’s first recruiting class. He was a two-year starter for the Red Raiders and was signed as a free agent by the Indianapolis Colts, but an NFL career never materialized.

Campbell founded an oil and energy company named Double Eagle Energy Holdings after his football career ended that turned him into a Texas landman billionaire.

He is now a member of the Texas Tech board of regents in addition to being maybe the school’s most influential athletic donor. Texas Tech athletes are reportedly being paid more than $50 million in name, image and likeness compensation this year, with Campbell leading the funding efforts.

The spending spree helped Texas Tech reach the championship of the Women’s College World Series behind star softball pitcher and Stanford transfer NiJaree Canady. The Red Raiders football team also entered this season ranked in the AP Top 25 after bringing in one of the most talented transfer classes in the country.

Campbell told The Athletic in June he is passionate about preserving opportunities for college athletes because being one himself was life-changing.

“This is very important to hundreds of thousands of kids across the country, gives them the opportunity for education, social mobility, character development,” he said. “I have countless stories from past teammates who were given an opportunity to get out of horrible situations or home life because of athletic opportunities. Otherwise, they would have never gone to college or had much of a chance in life.”

What is he talking about?

College sports are undergoing massive systemic changes, especially at the highest levels of the most high-profile sports.

College football and basketball, particularly in the power conferences, are becoming more professionalized. As part of a $2.8 billion antitrust lawsuit settlement, schools are now permitted to directly pay their athletes up to $20.5 million this year. How the money is spent is at the discretion of each school, but most of it is going to football and men’s basketball players.

Campbell says he is concerned the new expense and the pressure to direct so much money to the sports that traditionally generate the most revenue will lead schools to cut women’s programs and Olympic sports. And there is some evidence of that happening already. The commercial overstates the financial duress schools are under, but there is no doubt the current trajectory could lead to fewer opportunities throughout the more than 350 NCAA Division I schools.

“We can’t forget the fact that these big NIL deals and high-profile transfers, those things are happening with the top 2 or 3 percent of college football and men’s and women’s basketball,” Campbell said. “The other 97 percent that benefit from everything else, we cannot let them be forgotten in all of this.”

Schools need more money to fund their athletic departments. Campbell believes the way to get it is to reform the Sports Broadcasting Act, the law that gave professional sports leagues an antitrust exemption that allows them to bundle and sell the TV rights of their franchises.

In college sports, schools and conferences control media rights. If conferences were to try to bundle the rights to broadcast their football games, they would be breaking antitrust laws. But Campbell believes doing so could unlock billions of dollars to distribute among all of the more than 130 schools that compete in Division I’s top tier of football known as the Football Bowl Subdivision.

“We need to start thinking long-term and more about the greater good of the entire system,” he told The Athletic.

So they should do that, right?

Simply, not everybody in college sports is as convinced as Campbell that his plan will work.

In fact, there are plenty of doubters, starting with the commissioners and many high-ranking administrators in the Big Ten and SEC, the two most powerful and wealthy conferences in college sports.

The two conferences currently have media rights deals worth a combined $14 billion that extend into the 2030s.

Campbell’s pitch is that the most valuable schools and conferences will still get the biggest slices of the pie but because that pie will be much bigger, everybody’s slices will grow significantly.

Doubters say that’s a big assumption and a risk that’s not worth taking for the conferences and schools that already drive the most value.

Still, Campbell is doing all he can to put his plan in front of the court of public opinion, hoping that it appeals not just to college sports leaders but to the fans who fuel the economic engine of the business.

Campbell said the commercials will run for several more weeks.

— The Athletic‘s Justin Williams contributed reporting.

(Photo: Mateo Rosiles / Avalanche-Journal / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)