FORT WORTH, Texas — The $1,000 handshake from the booster/fan to the Big 12 kick returner who scored on a touchdown in a 61-6 win over an FCS school now has an online donation form, and is eligible for a tax write-off.
Texas Tech is taking full advantage of this new NCAA allowance.
Tech is not as secure as Texas or Texas A&M in college football’s power paradigm, but prominent Red Raider boosters are doing everything they can to ensure Tech’s future, which includes a plan that will allow fans to help pay players.
Cody Campbell, who is the co-CEO and co-founder of Double Eagle Energy in Fort Worth, this week helped to announce Texas Tech’s new NIL collective through the Matador Club that will pay 100 Texas Tech football players $25,000.
Campbell is a current member of the Texas Tech board of regents, and former Texas Tech offensive lineman who donated $25 million to help fund a football stadium project that was announced in December of last year.
“For me, the ROI (return on investment) is supporting the school that I love and the community that I love,” Cody Campbell said in a phone interview. “Seeing them have success is the ROI.”
In the last eight months no college football program has done more to help its future than Texas Tech; in November it hired new football coach Joey McGuire.
In December, it announced the major renovation project to the south end zone at Jones AT&T Stadium.
This month, it announced a $200 million project that will give Texas Tech the largest “contiguous football complex” in the U.S.
“We’ve made a commitment to compete at the highest level; when this facility is done it will be a top five facility in the nation,” Campbell said. “We have a solid financial situation, and we have positioned ourselves to be a part of the top tier of college football.”
However preposterous you think the current college athletics model is, it’s here to stay until it collapses, which will not happen until most of us are gone from this earth.
“No, I do not think this is sustainable permanently if you are relying on big donors,” Campbell said.
This is where you come in.
A Red Raiders fan can donate cash to help directly fund the backup punter.
If you want your school to win football, or men’s basketball games, it’s going to cost more than the price of a ticket, a hat, or that donation to the Big School Sports Teams Foundation.
It’s about paying players. All schools will soon want your help to foot the bill for the four-star wide receiver.
“What we have done (with the Matador Club NIL) is we have done a good job of crowd funding, and I think that is what this will turn into,” Campbell said. “A school like Texas Tech, which has a big fan base and alumni base, is really going to help out.
“That’s the one thing I have been encouraged by is the size and the passion of the Texas Tech people. We have been getting donations from $10 a month to $100 to whatever figure since we made the announcement. I am definitely encouraged by our ability to sustain it.”
According to the matadorclub.org website, you can make a one-time donation that will “help student athletes make ends meet.”
Your donation comes with certain benefits, such as “Insider updates on athlete appearances.”
And “Invites to Matador Club events for Strive for Honor Members.”
Campbell said the money generated for NIL distribution purposes goes into what functions like a checking, or savings, account; the interest generated is minimal.
If these NIL funds grow big enough, which all signs point that they will, you can expect they will be managed like an investment portfolio. That’s down the road.
Unlike a donation to an endowment that can be earmarked for a specific purpose, contributions to these NIL collectives go into a general pot that is dispersed equally to a group of student-athletes.
Some of the language, and the specifics, to the NCAA’s NIL world are still being worked out.
What classifies as “work” for the student-athlete to earn these NIL checks is still being determined. Most likely it will just be as a result of a public appearance on behalf of the team or school.
Then there is the matter of taxes; our dear Uncle Sam, no matter blue or red, always gets his cut.
Athletic departments are trying to educate these young people how to manage their new wealth so they’re not in trouble come April 15 when it’s time to file a tax return.
It is too soon in this process to know if the players are actually listening; a safe answer is, “Nope.”
The rules of this current NIL world are fluid, and all parties involved expect some more rigid language will be put in place in the next year or so.
Expect it to look something like a salary cap, with a softer title.
Expect enforcement to be ineffective.
The system is absurd. The system makes no sense. No one is doing anything to change it.
As one veteran college athletics official of nearly 50 years in the business once warned me, “Nothing is going to stop college football.”
It doesn’t much matter how we arrived to this point in college football’s journey through the seven layers of the Contradiction Forest, but here we are.
People such as Cody Campbell, and so many others who love college athletics, and specifically college football, are going to do whatever to ensure their team wins the next game.
They always have.
The difference now in an NIL world is the athletic departments will not just rely on a handful of wealthy boosters to help them out.
They will all soon ask of their alumni, and fans, to donate $100 to help give the running back, guard, defensive tackle, point guard, outfielder or whomever money so your team has a better chance of winning a college sporting event.
It is patently absurd.
It’s also college athletics.
Nothing is stopping it.
Get out your checkbook.
