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Texas Tech football entered the national spotlight this week when transfer player Brendan Sorsby tested positive for a gambling addiction.
The program is now facing a new controversy, after one of its top sponsors has drawn a different kind of controversy in recent months.
Texas Tech alumnus Cody Campbell, an energy billionaire and GOP donor, told Fox News Digital in an interview Friday, three days before news broke of Sorsby entering treatment for gambling addiction, that he is “concerned” about the inconsistency and enforcement of what is and isn’t allowed in college sports.
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Cody Campbell stands on the field after the Big 12 Championship game between Texas Tech and BYU at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, on December 6, 2025. (John E. Moore III/Getty Images)
“I’m concerned about consistency and law enforcement. I’m concerned about, you know, the difficulty schools have, you know, following the rules. I mean, a lot of schools don’t even know what the rules are. It’s not clear what’s legal and what’s not,” Campbell said when asked if he was concerned about the current state of NCAA oversight.
“I mean, I think the whole governing model right now in college sports is completely broken and dysfunctional. Nobody has the authority or ability to enforce any rules right now.”
Campbell offered no further comment after news of Sorsby’s repurchase emerged.
Campbell got into a heated argument with Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark earlier this month over moving Texas Tech’s football game to Friday night, which Campbell publicly called “absurd.” Yormark came out and said Campbell “doesn’t run the Big 12” and reminded him that conference decisions are made by officials, not boosters.
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Cody Campbell stands backstage during ESPN’s College GameDay at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, on Nov. 8, 2025. (John E. Moore III/Getty Images)
Campbell spoke about his relationship with the conference commissioners in an interview Friday with Fox News Digital.
“You know the commissioners, some of them I get along with better than others,” he said.
“You know, it seems that some people think that, it might be beneficial if nothing happens so that there will be chaos, it will continue because some conferences have, I should say that some members of other conferences have benefited, because of the chaos. And maybe some people don’t want anything to happen.
“I also have a problem with a commissioner or someone else who doesn’t care about all the profits that come out of college sports and is only interested in maintaining their position of power or, you know, the big paycheck they get.”
Campbell, a Republican who says he supports President Donald Trump’s vision to “save college sports” with the NIL and pass the portal rule, acknowledged that he has been criticized for some of his philosophical beliefs in governing college sports.
Campbell, who has been the focus of several ESPN profile pieces in recent months as someone who wants to help in the effort to “save college sports,” admits that he has also been criticized for his attempts to intervene in college sports as a whole, such as encouraging one school.
“I mean, yeah, I mean they did,” Campbell said when asked if he had been criticized for his belief in strict NIL regulation and the transfer portal.
“But the people who say those kinds of things don’t understand that, like, you know, a lot of the funding that’s going to fund this big deficit, a lot of the money that’s going to support our universities is coming from taxpayer money. Plus, most of the institutions we’re talking about here, most of them aren’t private anyway.”
Campbell believes that, unlike the energy industry, college sports “is not a free market.”
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The Big 12 logo and scoreboard are displayed at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, before the game between Texas Tech and BYU on Dec. 6, 2025. (Photos by Jerome Miron/Imagn)
“This is not at all like a private business like mine, run by private people,” said Campbell.
“This is not a free market. This is a government-sponsored program aimed at providing opportunities, providing social mobility, and providing national leadership development.”
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