FRISCO, Texas \u2014 Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire had already completed his portion of Big 12 football media days when Colorado’s Deion Sanders was asked if he has been paying attention to what the Red Raiders did in the transfer portal. <\/p>\n
The gist of that question was really about all the money for Texas Tech athletes, which is widely reported to be around $55 million for the upcoming school year. A significant chunk of that is expected to go toward the transformation of a football program that has never won a Big 12 title or even had a 10-win season since 2008, six years before three-time Super Bowl champion quarterback Patrick Mahomes played his first game for the Red Raiders.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, Joey got some money. Joey, where you at, baby? Spending that money, I love it,\u201d Sanders said emphatically about the fellow Big 12 coach he calls a friend, and who coached two of his three sons in high school. \u201cI love you, man. I appreciate you. Can you send a few of those dollars to us so we can get some of those players too?\u201d<\/p>\n
The reported dollar figures are staggering, even in these early days of schools being able to pay athletes directly. That total supposedly includes the maximum $20.5 million of revenue each school can share with players under the NCAA’s landmark House settlement that took effect this month, meaning the rest would come through name, image and likeness deals. <\/p>\n
Red Raiders spending big<\/p>\n
Last fall, Texas Tech said it was budgeting $14.7 million for the fiscal year \u2014 about $9 million more than the previous year \u2014 in support for the athletic program, which had a budget of nearly $129 million. The headlines started to come soon after.<\/p>\n
Tech\u2019s softball team had never won a Big 12 regular-season or tournament championship before standout pitcher NiJaree Canady arrived last year in Lubbock with a NIL deal that made her the first $1 million softball player.<\/p>\n
With Canady, who had been to the previous two Women\u2019s College World Series with Stanford, the Red Raiders won both of those league titles and got all the way to the final game of this year\u2019s WCWS before losing to rival Texas.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire speaks during Big 12 NCAA college football media days in Frisco, Texas, Tuesday, July 8, 2025. Credit: AP<\/p>\n
Canady has already signed a similar NIL deal for next season. Tech also added three top transfers: Florida second baseman Mia Williams; two-time 20-game winner Kaitlyn Terry from UCLA; and Missouri Valley Conference player of the year Jackie Lis, an infielder from Southern Illinois. <\/p>\n
Along with all the money spent on players, Texas Tech this spring unveiled a $240 million football complex at Jones AT&T Stadium, where Cody Campbell Field is named after the former offensive lineman who made a $25 million donation to the project.<\/p>\n
Campbell\u2019s financial impact on the program goes well beyond that. He is chairman of the school\u2019s Board of Regents, a billionaire who with his oil and gas partner John Sellers co-founded The Matador Club, the school\u2019s NIL collective that is now under the umbrella of the athletic department\u2019s Red Raider Club. Sellers and Campbell earlier this year sold some subsidies of an oil and natural gas company for about $4 billion. <\/p>\n
Last week, Campbell announced the launch of a nonprofit called Saving College Sports to help solve a \u201ccrisis” as the industry \u201cfaces an existential turning point as legal, governance and economic challenges threaten\u201d hundreds of thousands of athletes, fandom and the economies of campus communities.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Texas Tech linebacker Jacob Rodriguez (10) during an NCAA football game against Arizona, on Oct. 5, 2024, in Tucson, Ariz. Credit: AP<\/p>\n
On the gridiron<\/p>\n
The Texas Tech men’s basketball program has four Sweet 16 appearances since 2018, including a run to the national title game in 2019. But the big moneymaker for all programs is football and the Red Raiders will find out this fall if a big financial commitment to those players will get them into the 12-team College Football Playoff. <\/p>\n
Texas Tech brought in 22 football transfers in what many consider a top national portal class. Most are highly touted players, with about half expected to be starters and most of the others impact players on a team already with several key returners after going 8-5 last year in McGuire’s third season. <\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, it\u2019s been a fun offseason,” McGuire said before Sanders took the podium. \u201cWe were really aggressive whenever it came to the portal and meeting some of our needs for the football team. … I think this conference is really strong. There\u2019s a lot of teams that have some big opportunities this year to really make a statement, and we\u2019re planning on being one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the amount of money involved, some front-loaded NIL deals before the House settlement with new guidelines went into effect, it will certainly be a huge and expensive disappointment if they are not.<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand how important this year is,\u201d McGuire said. “We\u2019ve got to have a lot of things go right, but everybody does. You\u2019ve got to keep your quarterback healthy. You\u2019ve got to play at a high level. I know there\u2019s a lot of expectations. My job that I\u2019m going to really try to do is keep the pressure on me and the coaches.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tech returns senior quarterback Behren Morton, who threw for 2,976 yards and 25 touchdowns last season, and senior linebacker Jacob Rodriguez, the league’s top tackler with 126 last year. Rodriguez is the preseason Big 12 defensive player of the year, and on the league’s preseason team with a pair of four-star transfers: edge rusher David Bailey (Stanford) and defensive lineman Lee Hunter (UCF).<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s unbelievable, those guys came in and bought in to what we were talking about,\u201d Rodriguez said. “I love those guys to death already and I think they\u2019re going to make my job a lot easier, especially with the guys we have up front.\u201d<\/p>\n
It will also be up to McGuire to deal with paid players, some making significantly more than others on the roster.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that goes into your culture,\u201d the former Texas high school coach said. \u201cIt\u2019s real. It\u2019s real money. Guys are making different amounts of money in the locker room.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne thing that you better understand if you dream to play in the NFL, your contract\u2019s not going to be the same as the guy next to you, and if that\u2019s what you focus on, then you\u2019re going to spend a lot of time wasting a lot of energy,\u201d McGuire said. \u201cIf guys want to increase that, focus on what you can control. That\u2019s your game and how hard you\u2019re practicing and how hard you\u2019re playing.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP Sports Writer Schuyler Dixon contributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FRISCO, Texas \u2014 Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire had already completed his portion of Big 12 football media…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206373,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[41907,318,331,7,49,48,2309],"class_list":{"0":"post-206372","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-audio_enabled","9":"tag-college","10":"tag-college-football","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-ncaa","13":"tag-ncaa-football","14":"tag-wires-bot"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114851622972362374","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}