#398 - Cody Campbell - Saving College Sports, NIL, & A $7B Opportunity

Chris Powers: All right, I thought we would start, there was a meeting that was hosted at Shady Oaks a few years back that, as I've read it, was kind of like, here's the plan for how we're going to make Tech go to a whole new level. I guess the first question is like, what was discussed in that meeting, or like what was happening prior to that meeting that led to that happening? 

Cody Campbell: Yeah, I think you have to kind of back up a little bit. And we... so everything started changing in like the summer of 2021. And by everything meaning changing, everything changing, I mean that state laws were changing, there were court decisions coming down, all of which basically removing the rules that governed college sports historically. And so it became a place where there were no rules. You could kind of do whatever you wanted to do. And there were efforts to try to reign that in; all of them failed. But there was a court case that had been working its way through the California court system for 20 years, I mean since 2020, called House v. NCAA. And House v. NCAA in the summer of last year was, in summer of 2024, we felt like it was in a place where it was probably going to eventually get settled. And so, what we identified was that there was this gap period between the time that we knew we were going to have revenue sharing with the athletes pursuant to the house settlement, but for a period of time, we were still going to be able to pay NIL with basically no rules. And so we essentially decided to take advantage of that little window. And that is the sort of strategy that we presented to several boosters and donors who were interested in supporting. And we said, look, guys, this is our one big opportunity that we're going to have to lean in on this and maybe the best one we ever have. We can get as much money front loaded as possible. And then we can also utilize promises of revenue share in addition to that if we need some more money. And so, we can go out and acquire as much talent as we want. But the key in that is that we have to identify what we need, identify who we want and the right players that are going to fit with our culture and what we want to do. And so, from there, John Sellers and Gary Peterson and I were the main three, basically went to Coach McGuire and his staff and said, look, guys, here's the opportunity. Here's what we think we need to do. You guys just basically tell us what it's going to cost, and we're going to backstop it. And then we'll go out and try to raise money around it, so it's not all our money, and convey the same ideas to the rest of our booster community. And so, that's what we executed on. And the Tech staff did just an absolutely incredible job of evaluating talent. I mean, at that point, we didn't know, prior to December that year, we didn't know who was going to be in the portal. And so, they basically had to identify at the positions of need that we had, they had to identify and evaluate every possible candidate in the country. So they kind of evaluated all of college football. We brought in an analytics consultant to help with that, which has been fascinating to see how that can be applied in college football or in football in general. And then we just use old-fashioned coach evaluations of film and that kind of thing. And then when the portal opened, we had kind of a board of like these are the positions that we need and these are our top five or six players that we want to get. And we were able to get most of them in pretty quickly on campus. And I was just shocked, like at every position of need, because we hit it so fast and so aggressively and we had such a clear plan, we were able to- and we were able to communicate exactly what the players are getting and exactly when they're going to get it to all their families and to them, plus we have these phenomenal new facilities and we have a coach that's a really good recruiter, we were able to actually get commitments from every one of our top prospects in each position like within just a few days of the portal opening. And so I was blown away by it. Now, it also meant we were going to spend a lot more money than I really anticipated on spending initially, but we're here for it and, again, thought it was sort of a generational opportunity for us. And so just did a phenomenal job of executing on it and brought in some guys that were true game changers and then brought in guys who fit in with what we were doing. So not only schematically from a skill set standpoint, they fit in with our- the schemes that we run and all of that, but also they're good character kids. They're good teammates. We didn't want to bring in a bunch of mercenaries that were going to just be playing for themselves. And that's how it's worked out. And a lot of that credit goes to our coaching staff, to Coach McGuire and his ability to foster real relationships with the kids and make real connections with them. When you meet him, it's kind of hard to believe that he has the energy he has, he cares about getting to know you and connect with you as much as he does, but it's not an act. It's not a show. He's not trying to be manipulative. He genuinely, that's just how he is. And so people perceive his authenticity and they buy into it and they believe it. And so now they have a team of guys who came from all over the place, who've really come together and are playing well as a team. And we have the talent to- but we also have that team element and have good schemes, have good coaches, and it's all come together so far. We got two more games to win to get the Big 12 Championship, but so far, it's gone exactly as we hoped it would. 

Chris Powers: Okay, so it's like capital and plan. But as I've watched Tech from here in Fort Worth as a TCU fan, there's so many other intangibles that seem to have like elevated the... yes, the football team's kicking ass, but like, you kind of have to have this like, give a shit. There's plenty of capital and smart business guys at universities all over the country that clearly didn't, maybe some did it pretty well. Like, what are some of the other things going on that it's- that by doing this has created within the university, and maybe you would say, well, a good football team rises all boats, but it seems like there's so much more going on at Tech now than ever before. What else is happening?

Cody Campbell: So whenever we were talking to donors and trying to get them to help, everyone sort of intrinsically knew that this... we were sitting on a powder keg to some extent, like that there is an incredible amount of passion among Texas Tech alumni and that community. I mean, Texas Tech is the biggest thing going on in Lubbock. And Lubbock's 300,000 people. It's a bigger place than you think. People care about it a lot. You go to school out there, everybody that goes to school at Tech loves Tech. We had about a 90% hit rate on people that we solicited for money. I mean, everybody wants to help. They love the place. And so that's a unique thing that we have. We have a large alumni base. We have 42,000 students now, which is our largest student body ever, but 250,000 living alumni. And they all love the place. And so that's something that a lot of universities don't have and people who aren't a part of that community have a difficult time understanding, but the game we played against BYU on Saturday, you kind of got to see it. I mean, it was just pure insanity. And it was just everybody was just so excited to be there and so happy and just having a really good time. And I mean, that place, Texas Tech is the heartbeat of West Texas. It brings communities together. It brings families together. It's important. When I talk to my dad, my dad also played football at Texas Tech, I mean, half our conversations are about the Texas Tech football team, and he still goes out to practice every Wednesday... And there are a lot of families like that out there that Texas Tech is the thing. I mean, there's still a daily newspaper in Lubbock, the Lubbock Avalanche Journal, that's what it writes about. And there are talk radio shows in Lubbock that talk about Texas Tech sports all day, every day. It is a big deal out there, and people really deeply care about it and love it. And so, we knew that as soon as we got some momentum and gave people a reason to be excited, they would show up. And we knew that because we saw it during the leach era when we had some success and everything just went wild and we had all this support. We've seen it as we've had success in basketball. Our fans show up and they're loud and they're high energy. And so, we knew that if we were able to just get to that point where the excitement builds, that excitement and that energy will propel us even further. And so that was sort of the hope and the plan and that's what's coming to fruition. 

Cody Campbell: Okay. So, what was the- you mentioned a law in California in 2020, what was that law? Like what did it actually spell out? 

Cody Campbell: So the law was basically that student athletes could be paid for their name, image, and likeness. And so that's what started it all. And then all the other states started changing their laws to keep up with California. And then after that, there's a case that was titled Alston versus NCAA, pretty narrow case regarding special payments that are made to student athletes for academic achievement. And the court ruled in favor of the student athletes, and it was a 9-0 decision. Gorsuch wrote the actual decision, but then Kavanaugh wrote a consenting opinion, and in his consenting opinion, he said that based on any interpretation of antitrust law, the NCAA has been violating it for the last hundred years. And so essentially, if any other bigger case is brought before this court, we're going to drop the hammer on you. And so that precedent was set. And so lower courts followed suit. And so I don't know how many cases the NCAA has lost at this point. I mean, they have no control over anything. I mean, I'm fairly confident that if a kid went to court and challenged for his tenth year of eligibility, he'd be able to get it. Essentially what the court said is that the NCAA has been acting as a cartel, which I mean, by all- I mean, they have been. They basically all colluded against the student athletes and said, we're not going to pay you. That's not legal. 

Chris Powers: And they're still trying to do it. 

Cody Campbell: They're still trying to do it, unless you have an antitrust exemption to do so or you have engaged in collective bargaining with the labor. And so, collective bargaining in college sports doesn't seem practical because you're talking about 18- to 22-year-old kids. And I mean, I don't even know who the negotiate- who the parties negotiating would be. But so the choice, really the only option at this point is to reform the way that the sport is governed, fix the problems that the NCAA has, or replace the NCAA with a new entity and then grant that entity a limited antitrust exemption so that they can actually make and enforce laws, because it's not good for the sport for there to be no controls over NIL. It's not good for the sport for there to be no controls over transfers and eligibility and things like that. I mean, we need to have rules. And so, that's what, that's where Congress comes in is that they have to pass a federal law in order to get these things under control. And that all comes from what the court has said. 

Chris Powers: Okay, so you have lots of optionality of how you could spend your time. When did it become clear to you that this was going to be the thing that you were going to go dedicate a big portion of your life to? 

Cody Campbell: Well, so, I'm a former football player myself, college football player myself, so I have that experience. I've been on the board at Texas Tech now for five years. I've had a really good window into the way that the business of higher education works, been very involved with the athletic department and understand all the ins and outs of that and how the business of a college athletic department works. And then I started the- John and I started the NIL Collective, like I said, and we have been really involved with that and very closely following all the court cases, the different rules, the changes, everything that's happened over the time. And so, I felt very equipped from a understanding standpoint. I thought I knew what the problems were and I thought I had ideas on how to fix them, but no real clear path to like how I was going to go to Washington and try to affect change. And then Trump won the election, and I was- I am well connected with a lot of people in his administration. And so, I just went to him and I said, hey, this college sports thing is something that the federal government's going to have to be involved with. There's a lot of historical precedent for the president inserting himself in this. In fact, the whole reason we have the NCAA is because of Teddy Roosevelt created it essentially in 1905. So like, I think this is something the president should be involved with, and I would like to be his advisor on how we pursue it. And so I got really good positive initial feedback from the folks I talked to, and they said, yeah, we ought to run this up the flagpole. And so, I pretty quickly, even during the transition period, like before he was inaugurated, started kind of advising them on this topic and working it through all the channels, and there's this whole process and a lot of people involved and everything. I thought, my perception was that, all right, I'm going to go show up in Washington, and it's just going to be like a business deal. Like I'm going to lay out all the facts and the solutions, and they're based on data and they're objective and obvious. And so, everybody's just going to say, yeah, let's do that. Well, it doesn't really work like that in Washington. And so, now I've spent like close to a year working on it. And honestly, the year has given me an opportunity to further refine my approach, think more about the political side of it, and not only find a plan that will solve the problem but also find a plan that will be politically tenable. Because a bill will pass the House in the next few weeks, probably sometime after Thanksgiving. I support that bill being passed. It's called the SCORE Act, but I don't necessarily support the contents of the bill. It's not comprehensive enough. It's ham-handed. And so... 

Chris Powers: Why is that? Who does it benefit for it to be ham-handed? 

Cody Campbell: What it does is it addresses the very basic issues around basically making it to where the athletes can't sue the NCAA anymore. And it preempts all the different state laws and everything. It basically returns, it tries to return college sports back to where it was 30 years ago or whatever, which is very bad. Well, it does that plus it keeps in place the payments being made to the players. So that law is very bad for the student athletes. It's very bad for any school that isn't just brimming with money, which very few of them are these days. It's been shocking at how many are running large budget deficits. The average budget deficit in FBS, among those 136 schools, is $20 million per school per year. So completely unsustainable. In order to help pay for football, because football and men's basketball are the only ones that make any money... 

Chris Powers: And that's like iron rule across every university? There's no exception? 

Cody Campbell: No. They're the only two that make money. The money that those two sports make go to pay for the women's sports and the Olympic sports. And so what schools, unfortunately, are having to do is make the decision. They say, well, we have to protect our cash cow. We also have to protect the sport that gives us the exposure that we need to attract students and it's our advertising. So, we have to be as competitive as possible in football, so we have to give them all the resources they need. Well, in order to do that, we're going to have to free up budget space. And so they start making the decision to cut sports. And it's all the non-revenue sports. It's track, it's baseball, it's softball, it's swimming, it's gymnastics, it's soccer, things like that, that matter to a lot of people and provide opportunity to a lot of kids and are very important to the country. But if you're just running an athletic department purely like a business, you're going to cut them. And so we have to find a way to make reforms necessary to provide the system with enough money to where we can sustain all those sports. And so that, in addition to the legal part of it, that is the biggest challenge that we face is solving that business problem. 

Chris Powers: We can get to the solution in a second. So, if you take a step back and you look at the current situation, who are like the main stakeholders in it all? And what do they have to gain or lose if you're successful? 

Cody Campbell: So the main stakeholders are the institutions themselves and the student athletes. Those are two. 

Chris Powers: Okay. So Texas Tech and its players. 

Cody Campbell: And its athletes. And this would apply to really 95% of FBS schools are in the same boat financially, essentially. They all run budget deficits that are pretty large. Those budget deficits are funded by academic funds that are diverted from tuition, student fees, state taxpayer dollars. I mean, you name it, they dig up the money to pay for the shortfalls that they have. So the institutions, the conferences and their commissioners are a stakeholder in this. They have been generally opposed to what we're doing because the way things worked is that the conferences make the media deals. The media companies pay the conferences whatever they're owed. The conferences take the money out that they need to run their conference, pay their salaries and everything, and then they distribute what's left to the member schools. And then the member schools take that money, and then they have to deal with their disaster of a budget and figure out how to balance it. And so the conference commissioners have a different perspective on it than other parties, and they're very interested in preserving their position in the thing. And so, there's some selfishness there, and there's some conflict. And so, we've faced opposition from them, even though I talk to them and I’m trying to work with them, trying to get them to look out for the greater good and the long-term best interests of college sports. But that's hard because people are very short-term oriented. I think another stakeholder are the broadcasters, the media companies. So a good example is that right now, college football has twice as many viewers as the NBA, but college football receives half as much revenue each year as the NBA. And it's all- and we can talk more about why that's the case, but that's the case. And so many of the broadcasters are pretty happy with the deal they're getting. It's a very high margin product that they have, college football is. They get a lot of viewership and they don't have to pay as much as they have to pay for pro sports. And so they're in opposition to anything that might cause them to have to pay more money for the product. And so, you have to deal with them and they're a powerful entity. So, you have conference commissioners who have influence, contacts, lobbyists, everything else, broadcasters who, like we've been running these commercials, and one week the broadcasters refused to air the commercials and that had to be made a big deal of. I think we're cool now. But anyway, it's just... that's the pushback that you get. But the people who are actually practitioners and actually involved and actually care about the sport, the athletes, the communities that these colleges are in, I mean, these things like college football in many communities is like the cornerstone of the social fabric of the community, plus it has a huge economic impact and everything else. It's very important to them. It's very important to the institutions. Like again, nobody's ever going to see Texas Tech if they're not on TV playing football or basketball, because I mean, you don't drive past the campus every day. It's 300 miles away from here. So, it's very important for us to be able to attract students. So, everybody that's like in it is like, yeah, we got to do something here. This is an unsustainable problem. But then, a lot of people just want to ignore the economic realities. We've seen those economic realities proven out in recent weeks with Big Ten seeking out these private equity deals. We saw a story broke where University of North Carolina was going to sell a portion of its athletic department to Saudi Arabia. We've seen individual schools seeking out private equity deals like Army, which makes no sense. They're all really struggling and trying to figure out how to get through the next few years and at this point are willing to mortgage their long-term future and best interest for just essentially survival. And that's something that is... it's not good and it's very, very concerning, and it's symptomatic of the bad financial situation we've been in. But the other side of that is, when you look at any business that's not making money, you have to say, okay, maybe we have a revenue problem, but do we also have a spending problem? And so we've seen these massive coaching buyouts. We've seen facilities built that were built without enough donor dollars to really support the debt that they took on to pay for them. We've seen some really stupid financial decisions made. Again, I think many times those decisions were made, say an athletic department, an athletic director is under some heat. He needs to have some success quickly. So, he's going to bring in a big name coach and give him whatever contract he wants, knowing that, if they win, they'll make more money. If they don't win, he'll get fired anyway. And the school will have to deal with the financial ramifications of the deal that he's doing. So, all his incentives are aligned with making a bad deal. We have to kind of eliminate that agency conflict that exists in the system right now at many places. And so, it's played out at Penn State, at LSU and other places across the country where they're paying this astronomical buyout they can't afford. And so, they're out looking for money wherever they can get it to kind of cover these costs. And they're looking at some pretty dangerous places that'll be pretty destructive to college sports. 

Chris Powers: There's like 50 questions that came to mind. The first one real quick is if I was a commissioner and I'm arguing for why things should basically stay the same, but I probably have to say it in a way that makes the students also feel like they're getting a good deal too, what's their- like if they were sitting here, what would they say? Why is their plan good? 

Cody Campbell: The sad part about it is I've never heard a commissioner, and I pay a lot of attention to what they say, but I've never heard a commissioner talk about the wellbeing of the student athletes, which is very disappointing because that should be their number one priority is making sure that the student athletes are well taken care of. They don't talk about it. What they talk about is that any plan that isn't exactly what they want to do has all these problems with implementation or I don't believe the numbers. I don't- we say we can make an incremental $7 billion per year if we make some changes, the way that we market our media rights. They say, well, I don't believe that. And I'll say, dude, look, we've got hard data to prove it. If you don't believe our data, just look at what's going on in the pro leagues. Like just what I talked about... in baseball. I mean, I'm sorry, in the NBA. And you can see that it's obvious, maybe you don't believe $7 billion, but we can definitely make a lot more money if we unify our media rights. And so why would you not want to do that other than just that you don't want to give up control? And so that fundamentally is what it comes down to. They don't have good reasons, but the issue is complex enough and it's poorly understood enough that they can throw those things out there as kind of red hearings and confuse people enough to where people take their eye off the ball and they just refer it back to the most simple form of legislation possible, which does not solve the problem, and, in fact, probably just creates some less chaotic descent into destruction of the system than what we're on right now. 

Chris Powers: I understand from the media perspective, they don't really have any need to go say we're trying to save students, they're trying to save their business. How did it get to a spot where the NBA gets paid twice as much as the NCAA? What happened along the way that caused that fracture? 

Cody Campbell: So, there is a piece of legislation passed in 1961 called the Sports Broadcasting Act. The Sports Broadcasting Act explicitly gave the pro sports leagues the right to pool their media rights. So this is a form of antitrust exemption. So they can collude together and act as a single bargaining unit with the media companies to negotiate their TV deals. And college sports was specifically left out of that, because at the time, ’61, college sports were very different than they are today. They didn't have the media value that they have today. So, that's the difference. So now, you have this fractionalized media marketing system in college sports where each conference makes its own deal. And so, because of that, they have less bargaining ability with the media companies because they can play them off of one another. Secondly, they have less control over their scheduling. And so it happens every single week. There are two marquee games that are played at exactly the same time on two different networks. And so they cannibalize the viewership. NFL would never do that. They control their own schedule. And so they'll make sure that their best games are in the best time slots to maximize viewership. And we've seen NFL revenue just absolutely explode. And that was like a Jerry Jones thing 30 years ago, and I believe the New York Giants owner as well was involved with it, and said, look, we understand that we are in the biggest media markets, but we also know that if the Cleveland Browns and the Green Bay Packers are better, we're all better because fans want to see parity. They want to see competition. They want to see games late in the season matter. They're willing to watch them. And so that's how we all make more money is if we all are healthy. And so, they understood what most colleges don't understand, maybe some are starting to understand, is that we compete against each other on the field and we want to beat each other. But at the end of the day, we're all business partners and we're all in it together. We're all part of one big business. And so, we need to treat it as such when we go out to the market and try to monetize the value that we have. The problem is, right now, college sports don't have the legal right to do that. So individual conferences don't control enough of the market to violate antitrust law. So the SEC can go out and make its own deal, Big Ten can go out and make... etc, etc. And so that is the reason that you have had this conference realignment stuff. It really doesn't make any sense. It's why you have these conferences that extend from USC to Rutgers. It's because the conferences are incentivized to have schools in each time zone, each media market, to maximize the media deal they can get. And so they go out and grab schools all over the place. And so that's created a lot of disruption. That has also created a lot of additional costs. It costs a lot of money for UCLA to fly to the East Coast and back. It makes no sense, especially for the non-revenue sports. I mean, that's really hard on the volleyball team. So, I think that in the long run, I don't think that you want to legislate reconfiguration of the conferences, but I think that if you remove the incentive for them to be imperialistic and own parts of the whole country, you're going to see them over time transition back to what makes sense, which is regionalized conferences. It's better from a travel standpoint, it's better from a cost standpoint, but it's also better from a fan engagement standpoint. Like, TCU sells a lot more tickets when you play Texas Tech than when you play Central Florida, for instance. And the same thing goes for Texas Tech. I mean, Texas Tech has zero home games against teams from the state of Texas this year. 

Chris Powers: That's crazy. 

Cody Campbell: Yeah, it makes no sense. Now, we have a good team, so we're lucky, so we've been able to continue to sell out. But in a down year, I mean... And this is like the first year in over 7 years we hadn't played Baylor at all. 

Chris Powers: You don't play- We don't play y'all or Baylor at all? 

Cody Campbell: No, we don't play. We don't play you guys. And that makes no sense. 

Chris Powers: Who does that make sense for? Is this just stupidity, or is somebody winning because of this, of the Big 12 not having a great schedule, who's gets- is the FCC and the Big 10 have all to gain from this?

Cody Campbell: Well, no, I think it's just, I think the Big 12 specifically, it's just this is a bad unintended consequence of the arrangement that we made to try to keep our conference alive, and we brought in these schools from out of state to be competitive in our media deal and unintentionally kind of disjointed the conference in a way culturally. I mean, like you want to play against the team that your person you work with went to school at and you want to have.... I mean, you want to know the people that you're competing against. I mean, that's fun. That's what it's all about. And so, we've lost that in many ways, and it's unfortunate. 

Chris Powers: Yeah, I think after Thanksgiving, we used to play like Baylor. And there was always a question like, should we get back in town to go to the games? Like, we ain't rushing back in town to watch Cincinnati play TCU this year. It's just not going to happen, maybe if we were undefeated. But okay, I'm going to ask about private equity and then- So these private equity deals, are they basically just going to the school and trying to buy basically the football team out of the school, go renegotiate the media contract on a one-off basis for just that school? Or is private equity trying to buy the whole conference and put business in the middle of negotiating? 

Cody Campbell: So what has been proposed thus far is that they are trying to come in and pay a lump sum amount up front for a percentage of revenue going forward. So they're basically buying a royalty on the conference. And they are really bad deals. So like the Big Ten has been the one that's gotten the furthest on it and talked about it the most. So, you look at that deal, you look at the Big Ten conference as a whole, the most financially healthy conference in the country, by the way. 

Chris Powers: Is the Big Ten? 

Cody Campbell: The Big Ten, yeah. They have the highest payouts. Their schools also have the largest endowments of any other conference. Many of their member institutions have triple A credit ratings or double A plus or very high credit ratings. They can issue tax exempt bonds. So, they can all go to the market if they need money and borrow at very low rates, 4% or better. So how does it make sense for one of those institutions to borrow money at 15 or 16% effectively? I mean, anybody with any financial literacy knows that that's stupid, and essentially mortgaging your future at this very high rate, it's just going to make your life harder in the future. But for the next couple of years, you're going to be able to balance your budget, which is bloated and out of line. Instead of like thinking about making cuts that are necessary or finding other sources of revenue or looking at alternatives, that we're just going to go borrow this money at usury rates from a credit card essentially, and then we're going to pay it back... 

Chris Powers: From absolute stone cold killers. 

Cody Campbell: Yeah, stone cold killers who are not- you can't think okay, they're just going to take a small piece of the conference. That's not where it's going to stop. I mean, they are one group, and you can't blame them, who their one motivation is to make money. College sports is much bigger than just making money. It's much bigger than the games that we play. It's about education access. It's about social mobility for the student athletes. It's about leadership development. 60% of American CEOs have a college sports background. 94% of women in C-suite roles in this country have a sports background. Like, this is a very, very important institution from a leadership development standpoint that benefits the entire country. And we created it accidentally. We're the only country in the world that has college sports, that has sports inside of higher education. We did that on accident. And we're going to accidentally kill it now. Another thing we're going to kill is our Olympic development pipeline, because most countries in the world have like these federally funded Olympic development programs. All of our Olympic development programs is done inside of our colleges. Well, now, because of budget constraints, these Olympic sports, like swimming, like track and field, you name it, are being cut because the money's not there for them. So where are our Olympic athletes going to come from? I mean, so you're killing our Olympic system effectively. So these are real problems that need to be solved. And unfortunately, we're at a point where the federal government has to solve them. And like I was saying earlier, it's not as simple as walking in and saying, look, we got a problem. Here's the solution. Let's go do it. It's like, you got to go through just unbelievable, an unbelievable amount of process and bureaucracy and procedure and hemming and hawing and not doing anything and political calculations and everything else in order to try to get something done that just makes sense. Then you end up with a solution that kind of halfway gets it done. And so, I think that's kind of what we're hoping for right now is just a halfway kind of solution that at least kind of stops the bleeding. 

Chris Powers: And right now, is it still fair to say it's still the Wild West? Like, there's a lot of talk. Has there been any real progress? Because there was something that was supposed to happen last summer. 

Cody Campbell: It did, on July the 1st. 

Chris Powers: But you still hear of schools getting players bought. 

Cody Campbell: Yeah, so the house settlement kicked in July the 1st, and what that was supposed to do is allow the schools to pay directly from their athletic revenue 20.5 million dollars a year to the student athletes and it was supposed to stop the NIL collectives altogether. So, kids can still get NIL deals, but they have to be legitimate, like if you're going to go do an ad for your company or my company or whatever, you can do the ad and get paid for it, but it has to be market value. And that market value is not very big. It might be 500 bucks or something. But what people are doing is just either completely ignoring the rules or finding loopholes or trying to get around them and still- so the money's still coming in. It's just coming in in shadier ways than it was before. I mean, before there were no rules, so like you could do whatever you want to do. And so, do it. Now we have these rules, but people are just...

Chris Powers: No enforcer. 

Cody Campbell: Yeah, there's no effective enforcement. There is, nobody believes that there's anybody that has the ability to actually enforce any rules at the end of the day. So even if you get taken to court on it, you're going to win. And so, people are just like, screw it, let's just, let's do whatever we want to do. And so that's what you see happening. And that's unfortunate. That's not what the intent of the settlement was. That's not what was promised to the universities when they agreed to the settlement. Typical. And that was, again, driven by conference commissioners in the NCAA said you have to do this, you have to do this. It is going to be good for it. It's going to give us ten years of runway. It's going to settle things down. It hasn’t settled things down at all. It's actually just made it more confusing. But this created this thing called the College Sports Commission and they created this clearinghouse to decide whether an NIL deal is legitimate or not. It's been a disaster. The commission itself is basically just giving more power to the big schools and taking power away from the small schools, which has further worsened the divide and worsened the financial situation in the small schools while not helping the big schools in any way. And so, it's a... we have a problem without a solution. The only way to fix it is through congressional action. 

Chris Powers: Okay, so if you were successful, let's even maybe start with if you got everything you wanted, I know, and I really want to ask you, like what is Washington- I want to- I have some friends that left Doge and just their stories, they're like, Washington is just a different animal. You can't comprehend it if you haven't been in it. But maybe we get there. So, you've kind of said, here's the problem. I'm still trying to figure out who's winning in all this right now. Maybe the media is winning because they've kept their deal and they're still... 

Cody Campbell: Well, there are a few individuals who have maintained their position of power. 

Chris Powers: But is that more just like a status thing? Because as I recall, it's not like commissioners are making... 

Cody Campbell: No, they make a lot of money. 

Chris Powers: Do they? 

Cody Campbell: Yeah, they make millions of dollars. And it is a status thing. It's a control thing. 

Chris Powers: And there's no way for them to keep making millions of dollars and everybody wins? Or is that if...? 

Cody Campbell: I think that there definitely is. I mean, I think... 

Chris Powers: You're not trying to take that away from them.

Cody Campbell: I’m not trying to take anything away from anybody. We're just trying to make the system work. But... people don't like change. People in higher education are particularly skeptical of change. You go into higher education because you want kind of every day to be the same. You don't want to have any risk at your job. You don't... you're not a risk taker. 

Chris Powers: And these institutions have somewhat become bloated with like if you look at the org chart of a university 50 years ago against today, the middle management layer and the amount of jobs is nuts.

Cody Campbell: Yeah, they all are bloated. A lot of them have done a good job, especially in the state of Texas, of freezing tuition and doing all that, and we're fortunate in this state to be prosperous and to have population growth. So, student populations have continued to increase, while nationally on average over the last 10 years, student populations have decreased by 15%. So, that's helped us a lot. Our state has been funding us well because the state's been doing well. We have, every Texas school has donors that have done well in business. And so, they've been able to give back. So, like everybody kind of across the country, it's a very poorly kept secret that the winner in all of this, if nothing happens, is all the schools in the state of Texas. Because we just have this natural advantage economically and demographically, but we also really love football. And so, we have people who you go out and make money, you're more than happy to write a check to your football team. 

Chris Powers: Okay, so... if everything you were working on was successful, what would have happened? 

Cody Campbell: So, I think if I could wave a magic wand right now, I would set up a new governing body to replace the NCAA. I would empower that governing body with an antitrust exemption to make and enforce rules. I wouldn't have the government legislate what happens with NIL or transfers or eligibility stuff. I would set up a commission of the ten smartest people I could find, and those people exist. Some of them are some of the college commissioners, like some of those people need to be in the middle of it because they have the experience and the knowledge and they're really smart. You need people who are media experts. You need to have representation from student athletes, I don't think current student athletes, but maybe people who have played in the past, who have gone out and have some life experience and everything and can come back and be representatives of the student athletes' interest. But get those people in a room and say, all right, you guys figure this out. Figure out this revenue problem, figure out what we're going to do with eligibility, figure out what we're going to do with transfers, and set up rules and then give them the power to enforce those rules. And so I think with that, in a few days of meetings, you probably have all the problems solved almost immediately. And so I really think it's as simple as that. It's just reforming the way that we govern the sport and setting it up to where it's run like a business. Like you would never have a business that ran with a board that had 30 separate subcommittees responsible for rulemaking and enforcement. That's exactly what the NCAA has right now. They used to have 90. They brought it back down to 30. 

Chris Powers: Okay. And women and Olympic sports would be paid for how? 

Cody Campbell: Through the revenue that's- the incremental revenue that we generate. 

Chris Powers: That 7 billion that you think could flow down now to the bottom line? 

Cody Campbell: Yes, and so that's more than enough money to cover it. 

Chris Powers: And do you- is there still a world where the top two sports can still play the game and get great players and do what's been going on, or does that change over time too? 

Cody Campbell: I think the players still need to be paid. I think there ought to be a free market element to it. 

Chris Powers: Because who gets to determine what market is? You look at what Arch Manning's paid or some of these just super icons, and then you compare them to people and professional athletes. He's just as well known as every professional athlete out there making $50 million a year. 

Cody Campbell: Well, I think you let the market determine that. 

Chris Powers: So it is a market deal. 

Cody Campbell: Yeah, you set salary caps. You have to. Every sport does that.

Chris Powers: Do you change transfer options where they have to stay all four years? 

Cody Campbell: I do think you limit transfers. I don't think you- like if your coach leaves, I think you ought to be able to transfer. If certain things happen, maybe you get one free transfer and then you have to sit out or something like that, like it used to be. There need to be limitations on transfers. Again, I don't think that I or Congress should be the ones that are determining that. I think it ought to be the people who are actually doing it every day that figure that out. But yeah, you limit transfers, but you let the free market determine how much a kid gets paid and let them negotiate the best deal they can negotiate for themselves and let the schools pay what they think they're worth and go out and compete just like every other business. I think that's just fine. And I think the kids should be paid. They bring a lot of value. But they can't be paid so much that it destroys the whole system. And that's sort of what we're on track for if we don't get this thing under control. 

Chris Powers: Do most of these kids, is it their parents making the decision or have they hired agents, or it's a mixed bag? 

Cody Campbell: It's a mixed bag. Most of them have agents now. And agents are part of the process. And that's actually something that the federal government could get involved with is regulation of agents. In the NFL, agents are limited to taking 3% of what their clients make. We've seen kids pay their agents over 20% and not really get any true representation. So there are a bunch of scumbags involved in that part of it. There needs to be registration. There needs to be background checks. There needs to be like a certain set of certified agents that can represent kids. And that's fine and that's fair because a lot of them don't have any business experience or family or background that can help them to work through all this stuff. So some kids need agents, I get it. But those agents need to be legitimate people who are actually representing their clients and have a fiduciary duty there rather than just trying to make money for themselves. 

Chris Powers: So, is this something that gets solved in Trump's term? Like, I know you hope it does. Like, I'm listening to this, and it's like, we've set rules, but it's still kind of the Wild West. You have said you've now refined your approach and learned a lot. It's one thing, like, okay, if you're successful, then they have to be able to enforce all this, which is probably easier done... Maybe that's the question. Is it easier to enforce all this if it is in your setup as opposed to how it currently is? 

Cody Campbell: Yeah, definitely. I mean, you just have to, you have to give them the authority and the right structure and then let the government get completely out of the way and let it run. That's what you have to do. And I do think it can be resolved in the president Trump term. I don't- and I'm not saying that because he's a Republican and I like Trump or whatever. It's because he cares about sports and college sports in particular. And so, if you have a president who it's a priority to, then you're more likely to get the attention that it needs than if not. And so, my hope is that he- his presence will help to push this along as an issue. I mean, he was just on Pat McAfee yesterday talking about it. I've had numerous conversations with him about it. He cares a lot about this stuff and wants to see it fixed. Now he also has a lot of other things going on. I mean, he's a busy guy. And so, there are much more existential problems that he has to solve on a day-to-day basis that sort of, distract is the wrong word, but divert his attention away from something that is very important to his voters, very important to the American public at large, but might not get the attention it needs on a consistent basis in order to get it solved. And so that's why I think you haven't seen it solved in his first 10 months in office is because it just hasn't risen to the level of top priority yet. But he's starting to talk more and more about it. He's definitely engaged. I saw him two weeks ago and it’s the first thing he asked me about, saw me and Cody, Cody, Cody, what are we- this college sports thing's a mess. What are we going to do about it? Are we getting it fixed? And I said, yes, sir. We're starting to make some progress. We are. But we're going to need your help here in about a month when this thing gets in the Senate. And he said, just call me and let me know what you need. I'm here. 

Chris Powers: And it is a bipartisan deal. Like everybody wants, even blue cities, red cities, they all want their universities to succeed. 

Cody Campbell: Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's sports fans on both sides of the aisle and this is not a partisan issue at all. And in fact, if you bring your ideology to the table when you're talking about this kind of stuff, it's actually very difficult to find a solution because college sports transcend ideology in many ways. People will say, well, if you're going to pool revenue and distribute it, blah, blah, blah, that's socialistic. And hey, you're a capitalist, you're a businessman, how can you be supporting this? And I'm like, give me a break. I mean, this system was socialized a long time ago. In fact, 90 some odd of the FBS schools are literally owned by the state, by the people already. And then, the private schools are all funded largely by the federal government. And I would argue that the institution of college sports is owned by the American public as a whole. So, the thing is socialized; it belongs to all of us. And it's in all of our best interests that it is preserved. And so, we need to do things that aren't ideologically pure necessarily. If you leave it up completely to the free market and you just open it up, all you're going to have is a small number of teams playing football and a small number of teams playing basketball, and you're not going to have any women's sports or any Olympic sports. Nobody wants that. Nobody thinks that's a good idea. So, let's leave our ideology outside and let's talk about practicality and find a way to preserve this system that is, again, we created it accidentally, but it's turned out to be really good for the country. 

Chris Powers: So if you're sitting and you're listening to this and you're like, look, I'm more of an average Joe, I don't have a ton of whatever it might be, don't know the right people, don't have the pocketbook, how does like your average person even get involved in this fight? 

Cody Campbell: Well, I think, to the extent that you have connections with your university president, your athletic director, any of your elected officials, you talk to them about it. You tell them it's important to you, and you want to see it solved. You tell them you care about Olympic sports, tell them you care about women's sports, tell them how important those football games are to you and your family and your community, say how much you love basketball, those types... I mean, these things make people's lives better and happier. I saw it in Lubbock on Saturday, like people were having a great time. I mean, it made my week...

Chris Powers: I have to admit, I've never been excited to get up and watch a Texas Tech football game and we had it on at 11 am. 

Cody Campbell: I mean, it was fun. And that's the thing is like we've had sports for the whole history of humankind, modern history. And the reason we do it is because we all love it and enjoy it. And it gives us an escape from life, which kind of sucks sometimes. And so, it's important to have those things. And again, like all these people getting together and tailgating, they're all seeing their friends, they're socializing. I mean, this is a good thing for the social fabric of our country. And football in particular is like the most American sport that exists. It celebrates meritocracy. It celebrates masculinity. It showcases what it is to be an American. We play the National Anthem at the beginning of the games. I mean, it's a patriotic American sport, and we have to keep that. We can't let it go. And college sports in particular are. And it means a lot to these communities, like Morgantown, West Virginia, Stillwater, Oklahoma, Manhattan, Kansas, Ames, Iowa, Lubbock, Texas. Those places are not the same without those sports teams playing. I mean, they're not in many ways. People talk about culture as being like the opera or symphony or something, but like in places like that, the culture is, with college sports, it's college football. And I don't think we need to discount the importance of that part of their culture just because we're on the East coast or the West coast and we look down our nose at it. It's important to those people. It's important to me. It's important to you. And we're not just Neanderthals or whatever. I mean, we both went to college. 

Chris Powers: It's fun. 

Cody Campbell: It's a lot of fun. 

Chris Powers: All right Cody, this was awesome. 

Cody Campbell: Yeah, thanks a lot. 

Chris Powers: Thanks for coming. 

Cody Campbell: Yeah, I appreciate you, man.