Flexing its muscle: Tech making strides in NIL game

The Matador Club, the organization that supports Texas Tech athletes' name, image and likeness endeavors, has attracted more than 3,000 contributors and expects to roll out more teamwide deals soon, one of its founding board members says.

In July, the Matador Club signed 100 Tech football players to one-year, $25,000 contracts that began in August with monthly payments and last week the club signed 27 Tech softball players to one-year, $10,000 contracts to operate in the same manner.

A separate organization, the Level 13 Agency, announced in late July a teamwide NIL deal with all Lady Raiders basketball players worth $25,000 apiece.

Athletes are free to make NIL agreements separate from the team deals, and many Tech athletes have done so.

"I've just been pleasantly surprised and, honestly, blown away by the amount of support that we've gotten from the Texas Tech community," said Cody Campbell, one of six Tech alumni who launched the Matador Club in early 2022. "People are very clearly extremely passionate about Tech and love the school. Want to do everything they can to help. Want to do everything they can to support.

"We've had people reach out, in many cases unsolicited, to help support the non-revenue sports, the women's sports and so we're well on track to have every athlete on campus with an NIL with the Matador Club, which was our original goal. We're way ahead of schedule on that and very excited about the progress we're making."

Tech has 415 athletes on campus, senior associate athletics director Robert Giovannetti said. Among them are 133 on full scholarships and 85 to 90 on partial scholarships.

In the wake of teamwide agreements being announced publicly for Tech football, women's basketball and softball players, some have wondered when a similar opportunity might come for the Tech baseball team, given its four trips to the College World Series in the past eight full seasons.

"We're in the process of working on baseball right now," Campbell said. "We're going to roll out a program for them. A lot of people are big baseball supporters, very passionate, so there's a great big group that wants to help and we're getting all that set up right now. They're definitely a sport that's going to get a lot of support, and I think we'll have one of the leading, if not the top baseball NIL programs in the country when it's all said and done."

Campbell said Matador Club conversations also have taken place with supporters of track and field and soccer. "In sports like that," he said, that generally receive less of the spotlight than football and basketball, "it really takes somebody stepping up in a bigger way to get things going."

College athletes were cleared to profit off their name, image and likeness in July 2021 with the passage of state laws and the decision by the NCAA not to contest them. Dozens of Texas Tech football players promptly had NIL deals in place by the time the 2021 season started.

As of July 2022, Tech athletics had received more than $414 million in philanthropic giving unrelated to NIL since 2011. More than $363 million of that has come in since 2014, the year Tech announced the Campaign for Fearless Champions to donor-fund more than two dozen sports facilities projects.

None of that money has been or can be used for NIL arrangements. Universities generally are prohibited from involvement in such agreements other than to provide their athletes with education on the NIL space and check that offer disclosures the athletes provide to the school are rules-compliant.

But the snapshot of philanthropic giving provides context for how sports-minded Tech donors have backed the Red Raiders over the past decade.

Now they're being asked by outside donor collectives to consider helping in a different way.

"I think overall this whole effort, year-in, year-out, is going to take probably eight to 10 million dollars to do everything we need to do," Campbell said. "On the onset, I would have thought that was an unachievable amount. As it stands now, I think it's something we can do on a sustainable basis, but the key is going to be that everyone gets involved and realizes how important it is.

"We know that not everyone can write a gigantic check, but we just need everyone to do what they can do. Truly, our advantage in NIL with Texas Tech is our numbers and our passion, and so we need everyone to step up and help. The crowd-funding model is what is going to make NIL a huge strength for Texas Tech. It's something we can do, with our numbers and our passion, that other schools just can't replicate."

Those analyzing and reporting on NIL developments in college sports seem to agree. In August, On3NIL ranked the Matador Club at No. 8 in its list of "the top 20 most ambitious NIL collectives." That was before the teamwide announcement for Tech softball.

The On3 report said, "A collective’s ambition — measured in its vision, scale and financial resources — will determine how impactful it is, how well and efficiently student-athletes are compensated through NIL activities and how much of a recruiting advantage it creates."

The collectives On3 ranked ahead of the Matador Club were ones supporting athletes from Tennessee, Miami, Texas A&M, Oregon, Florida, Southern California and Ohio State. Behind the Matador Club in the top 15 were collectives that backed Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Michigan, Michigan State, Indiana and Kentucky. Rounding out the top 20 were donor groups from South Carolina, West Virginia, SMU, Virginia Tech and Arizona.

"The one good thing with NIL as it relates to Tech is that we do have an advantage in it relative to even a program like Alabama," Campbell said. "We have a lot of people that really care, and we have a large, relatively affluent alumni base and so we can get money together. Now that NIL exists, it gives us a chance to sort of reshuffle the deck with some of those programs that are seen as being the perennial powerhouses. And so it's an opportunity for us, but again, it takes everybody doing their part.

"If we continue on the trend we are on, we're not going to have any problem gaining a lot of ground on those schools. Certainly, right now, as it stands in the remaining Big 12, we have the top NIL program — not only raising the most money, but we're the most organized and we're doing it most effectively and we're abiding by the rules. We're way ahead of the rest of the conference, but even nationally we're definitely in the top 10 in terms of the things that we're doing and maybe even higher than that."

This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Flexing its muscle: Texas Tech making strides in NIL game