FRISCO, Texas — 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.

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.

“Yeah, Joey got some money. Joey, where you at, baby? Spending that money, I love it,” Sanders said emphatically about the fellow Big 12 coach he calls a friend, and who coached two of his three sons in high school. “I 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?”

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.

Red Raiders spending big

Last fall, Texas Tech said it was budgeting $14.7 million for the fiscal year — about $9 million more than the previous year — in support for the athletic program, which had a budget of nearly $129 million. The headlines started to come soon after.

Tech’s 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.

With Canady, who had been to the previous two Women’s 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’s WCWS before losing to rival Texas.

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.

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.

Campbell’s financial impact on the program goes well beyond that. He is chairman of the school’s Board of Regents, a billionaire who with his oil and gas partner John Sellers co-founded The Matador Club, the school’s NIL collective that is now under the umbrella of the athletic department’s Red Raider Club. Sellers and Campbell earlier this year sold some subsidies of an oil and natural gas company for about $4 billion.

Last week, Campbell announced the launch of a nonprofit called Saving College Sports to help solve a “crisis” as the industry “faces an existential turning point as legal, governance and economic challenges threaten” hundreds of thousands of athletes, fandom and the economies of campus communities.

On the gridiron

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.

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.

“Yeah, it’s been a fun offseason,” McGuire said before Sanders took the podium. “We 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’s a lot of teams that have some big opportunities this year to really make a statement, and we’re planning on being one of them.”

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.

“I understand how important this year is,” McGuire said. “We’ve got to have a lot of things go right, but everybody does. You’ve got to keep your quarterback healthy. You’ve got to play at a high level. I know there’s a lot of expectations. My job that I’m going to really try to do is keep the pressure on me and the coaches.”

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).

“It’s unbelievable, those guys came in and bought in to what we were talking about,” Rodriguez said. “I love those guys to death already and I think they’re going to make my job a lot easier, especially with the guys we have up front.”

It will also be up to McGuire to deal with paid players, some making significantly more than others on the roster.

“I think that goes into your culture,” the former Texas high school coach said. “It’s real. It’s real money. Guys are making different amounts of money in the locker room.

“One thing that you better understand if you dream to play in the NFL, your contract’s not going to be the same as the guy next to you, and if that’s what you focus on, then you’re going to spend a lot of time wasting a lot of energy,” McGuire said. “If guys want to increase that, focus on what you can control. That’s your game and how hard you’re practicing and how hard you’re playing.”

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AP Sports Writer Schuyler Dixon contributed.

David Pollack likes LSU as a College Football Playoff team if everything breaks right and that’s a big ask in 2025. There’s a lot of talent on the Tigers, but there are some questions going into the fall.

Garrett Nussmeier certainly helps going into the season. The LSU quarterback is a Heisman Trophy contender, but as Pollack pointed out, he’s gotta deal with a new offensive line.

Four of the five guys from last year are gone. So basically if everything’s perfect, which is rare, LSU could be a playoff team. 

“And so to start this off, that’s great (because you have Nussmeier),” Pollack said on See Ball Get Ball. “Four guys of the five up front are gone, and they got drafted. They went to the NFL. And here’s the disturbing part, like when I start to look at this roster, I see a lot of great. I see a lot of great, I see a lot of good things. I see a lot to be excited about. I see a team, if everything went perfect, they could go to the playoffs … if the new additions are who the new additions are, like, they’re a team that could somehow get it together. But the offensive line a year ago had four guys drafted … and they didn’t have balance on offense, and that’s where that has to grow for me. 

“Like I saw Caden Durham, who’s an animal. Like this dude is a freshman. He proved he’s one of the best backs in the country. He had more receiving yards than any other freshman in the country, he was good at that. He was almost three and a half yards after contact every single time he touched the football. Like, this dude can play the game. They’ve got to have more balance. If Nussmeier has balance on this offense, good luck. Like they’re going to score points at will against everybody, and then the defense obviously comes along and makes plays.”

David Pollack says LSU needs everything to break right

LSU has some talent as Pollack alluded to the offensive talent. Barion Brown and Nic Anderson transferred in at the WR spot as well as sophomore running back Caden Durham going into Year 2 with the program.

The defense for LSU has some transfers, including in the secondary. Harold Perkins is also back at linebacker for his junior season.

“They got the running back, the offensive line, does that come to fruition,” Pollack said. “The schedule you mentioned, though, at Clemson, at Ole Miss, at Bama, at OU, that’s a lot of ‘ats/’ And I think early in the season, while this all things coming together, like, are they out of it before they blinked? Like, are they out of it before they gel?

“Because I see this team down the stretch being a team that like crap, you don’t want to fool with. You don’t mess with (them) once they’ve gelled, once they’ve got experience. But coming out of the gates, how good is LSU and to me that’s why they’re not going to make the playoff to me.”

Arkansas Razorbacks coach John Calipari had an eventful first year as the head shot-caller for the program in the 2024-25 season. The Razorbacks had an abysmal start to the recently concluded campaign, wherein they started 0-5 in conference play, before eventually making it to the 2025 NCAA tournament and reaching the Sweet 16.

In a recent media availability on Wednesday, July 9, by Inside Arkansas on YouTube after an Arkansas open practice, Calipari was asked about his thoughts on his first year with the Razorbacks and how it affected his and the team’s overall morale from the beginning to how they finished.

“Last year, you know how it started, we had no team, had no staff. I said, ‘Can I see the schedule?.’ There was no schedule. I’m like, ‘What?,’ and now you bring guys together that did not know each other and I had a couple from before but the reality of it is it was a brand new team. Then we get hurt, so I didn’t get to do the scrimmaging, and I knew we’d be behind,” Calipari said. (13:30)

He then went on to expound on the gravity of the result they had by the end of the year.

“But, at the end of the year, that was the most rewarding year I can remember in a long time because they stayed true and they stayed strong and we just kept tweaking and changing to try to make us good. Right now, you know, you can tell I’m more comfortable, like, I had to walk in here, I didn’t know anybody. I didn’t know the campus. Do you guys understand? I never was on this campus,” Calipari explained. (14:11)

“We went from the graduate down the back way and I’m thinking, ‘This is awful,’ to that building and most times, it was dark. We came in late and maybe in the afternoon, we’d come down and chill but we went the back way…So, I didn’t even know what the campus was, I didn’t know anybody, all that stuff. So, I’m just more comfortable,” he added.

In his first year with the Razorbacks, Calipari led the program to an overall record of 22-14 (8-10, SEC) and went all the way to the Sweet 16 of this year’s March Madness, bowing out of the tournament to the Texas Tech Red Raiders, 85-83.

John Calipari Is More Aligned With The Arkansas Razorbacks Now Given That It’s About His Players

Later on his availability to the media after an open practice with the Arkansas Razorbacks, coach John Calipari shared why exactly he is more comfortable and at peach with being at the helm of the program’s coaching staff, citing their priorities as the reason why.

“Let me tell you, I am so happy and comfortable and at peace with what we’re doing and how we’re doing it because we’re about the kids. It ain’t about this, that, it’s about those kids. Now, if we do our job, they’re going to lead us to where we’re trying to go, and I say it again, it’s real, what we’re doing,” Calipari shared. (15:12)

Calipari and the Razorbacks will now look to uncork a better outing in the 2025-25 season later this year, which officially begins around the first week of November.

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LAS VEGAS — There is a four-word sentence that would have been difficult to ever imagine typing even just a few days ago.

Mike Gundy is right.

OK, I said it. We got that out of the way.

Let’s not kid ourselves. The Oklahoma State football coach didn’t exactly arrive at a correct opinion through altruism. But hey, that whole saying about a broken clock has been proved right yet again.

Gundy this week directly articulated what many in the college sports landscape are only willing to say behind the scenes. All of these new rules and regulations created by the House v. NCAA settlement and the implementation of revenue sharing for college athletes just isn’t working.

Already.

And we’re only like 10 days into the rollout.

“You’ve gotta restructure your systems and admit players are employees,” Gundy told the “Andy & Ari On3” podcast at Big 12 media day. “Then you can build collective bargaining. We’ve all talked about it. But you have to admit they’re employees. You can do it all. You can have a (salary cap) and you need an entry level for a high school player coming in because it’s not sustainable.”

Those voices that have been against players getting paid at all certainly aren’t going to like the idea of unionization and even more power, but it might be the only way forward.

Gundy’s evolution on the issue is a result of a realization his program, which tried to hold the line against pay-for-play recruiting in the transfer portal, can’t compete in the new era.

While his motives may not be pure, Gundy has at least arrived in the place where most everyone else will be in time.

Because remember how the settlement was supposed to fix so much of the broken pay structure in college sports? How it was going to bring transparency to a process that severely lacked it and at least put teams on an even playing field in terms of moving the payments above board while still allowing the athletes to profit off their individual value above and beyond the revenue sharing money while providing some oversight to the transactions?

It truly was an admirable endeavor. It just wasn’t going to work.

Ideally, this model was going to be a solid bridge to the inevitable and potentially a good foundation from which to build the future model for college sports.

But that concept certainly wasn’t helped by the settlement getting approved just days before it was set to be implemented. That created chaos.

While programs were cleared to immediately start compensating athletes up to the salary cap, the firm Deloitte was tasked by the power conference-backed College Sports Commission with deciding whether individual players’ NIL deals above and beyond that were legitimate and of fair market value.

It would take far more time and words to explain the difficulties of determining such a standard. So, it seems what has happened in practice is the College Sports Commission has decided to simply reject all deals done with athletes through collectives as a general practice as a starting point.

Collectives can serve as a conduit to connect athletes with legitimate businesses, it clarified in a letter, but can’t essentially hold their own fundraising events to collect money to pay players. It’s a fine line.

But it also means players were made promises that may not actually come to fruition.

Some of the more forward-thinking groups front-loaded deals and got the payments made before this process started a couple weeks ago, but others are left wondering what happens next.

Attorneys for the players have lashed out, demanding a retraction of the ruling on collective payments and calling it a restriction of the players’ earning potential that runs counter to the settlement.

On the flip side, allowing collectives to simply accumulate and distribute vast resources as a way to circumvent the new salary cap rules kind of defeats the whole competitive balance thing.

It’s incredibly complicated.

“We don’t know the rules,” Arizona State coach Kenny Dillingham admitted. “The settlement passed, but who knows what Deloitte is going to clear? Until there is clarity, you’re living in limbo.”

Exactly.

Gundy is right. So is Dillingham. Sadly, this temporary fix has to be extremely short-lived.

Chances are even some sort of CBA isn’t going to provide all the answers, but it’s the logical next step.

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At the Big 12 media days, commissioner Brett Yormark was very upfront about what the College Football Playoff expansion should look like. He continues to beat the drum of five automatic qualifiers with eleven at-large bids chosen by the College Football Playoff committee. He fired back at Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti, who is pushing for more automatic qualifiers, with four each going to the Big Ten and the SEC, and only two each for the Big 12 and ACC, and a small amount of at-large.

Tony Petitti and Brett Yormark aren’t hiding their disagreement over the CFP’s expansion

Petitti joined CBS Sports’ Joel Klatt a few weeks ago to talk about the College Football Playoff expansion and how a decision needs to be made by December 1. He believes the Big Ten and the SEC are due more bids than other conferences, and he doubts that increasing the committee’s at-large choices will make a difference.

““If you go to 16, and you have 11 at-large, you just added even more decision-making…We’ll stipulate the committee does the best job they can. This is not to say the (committee) doesn’t do a good job…They make incredibly difficult decisions based on data…When you start comparing teams that don’t have a head to head and you have very little data to look at between leagues, that becomes really difficult.””

Tony Petitti, Big Ten Commissioner

Brett Yormark thinks that’s a terrible idea and was very clear to voice his disdain over it during the Big 12 media days. He called it a professional model like the NFL and thinks college football should act like college football. There’s a reason it’s different in his mind, and that conferences should be working for the good of all of football, not just their own conference. Which ironically is what Yormark is being accused of by advocating for the 5+11 model.

““We have the responsibility to do what’s right for college football … not what’s right for one or two or more conferences. I think 5-11 is fair. Earn it on the field, assuming we want to expand. I love the current format, but if we’re going to expand, let’s do it in a way that’s fair and equitable and gives everyone a chance.””

Brett Yormark, Big 12 Commissioner

The Big Ten and the SEC have yet to have their media days, and so there will be more expansion thoughts publicly broadcast as the dispute has come out in the open. It’s hard to know how it will all shake out, but the December 1 deadline is looming.