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Texas Tech Football Players to Receive $25K Deals

Non-Profit Signing Texas Tech Football Players to $25K Contracts
Close-up of a Texas Tech Red Raiders football helmet. | Image by Uniswag

A week after Texas Tech announced a $200 million renovation of its stadium, the school announced that a group of donors is extending one-year renewable deals worth $25,000 to all 85 Red Raiders scholarship football players and 15 top walk-ons. 

The largesse comes from The Matador Club, comprised of private Texas Tech supporting donors and founded by oil and gas executive and former Texas Tech offensive lineman Cody Campbell. 

Players signed to the deal will be expected to do community service and charitable work in the Lubbock area, Campbell told the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. Campbell says the goal of the deals is to promote civic involvement as opposed to product-based endorsement deals.

The first payments will start to go out the first week of August, and Campbell emphasized that the amount of money will be the same for the team’s biggest star to the last walk-on. 

“Collectives have done things a number of different ways,” Campbell said. “You see some of them paying large amounts to individual players. You see others doing different things. But what we want to do, really, is support the entire program. This is kind of a base salary for the guys. They’re not going to be restricted from doing any other NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) stuff with anybody else. In fact, we’re going to encourage and help them to do that.”

“But this is just something that’s going to make sure that guys feel supported by the Texas Tech community, that they are comfortable and in a position where they can stay in the program and develop themselves, because we really believe in what coach [Joey] McGuire and his staff are doing in terms of being focused on long-term player development. We think that’s the key to Texas Tech, in particular, having success,” Campbell added.

Texas law prohibits schools from being directly involved in NIL deals, but an outside organization like the Matador Club is free to provide NIL opportunities. Campbell said the group hired an attorney to help craft its NIL offer and ensure it adheres to NCAA rules that colleges cannot use NIL to entice high school recruits.

“That’s a rule a lot of people are breaking,” Campbell said. “We’re absolutely not going to do it. We’re not going to play that game. Now, I’m certain that when every player on our roster gets $25,000, it’s going to become known that Texas Tech has a good NIL program that’ll be appealing to recruits, but we’re not going to make any promises on the front end. We’re not going to break any rules.”

Campbell, who donated $25 million in December towards the stadium renovation, said payments to football players are just the first step for the collective.

“The Matador Club has been funded by private donors,” Campbell said. “We’ve gotten to a point where we’ve done pretty well, and so we’re ready to sign the contracts with the football team. We plan to move forward with [men’s] basketball and baseball in the next weeks, months to come.”

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1 Comment

  1. caseyp

    They “will be expected to do community service and charitable work in the Lubbock area”, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. How many of them actually will? Certainly not all of them.

    Reply

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