The former offensive lineman turned oil field billionaire investor, Cody Campbell, helped bankroll Texas Tech’s surge into national relevance. He then decided to take his fight nationwide, rolling out the “Save College Sports” (SCS) proposal. But the two richest conferences of the NCAA, the Big Ten and the SEC, shut the door on his nonprofit initiative. That’s when Campbell spoke his heart out.

“I haven’t read the whole thing yet,” he said as Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger shared the Texas Tech billionaire’s message. “Can’t, for the life of me, figure out why they released that right now. We’re trying to get an amended Score Act passed in the House, if nothing else, to show some progress and momentum—this version of the bill does not include mention of the SBA. So, this is just a distraction and makes that passage even more difficult.”

Campbell aimed at the 1961 Sports Broadcasting Act. It is the law that lets pro leagues pool their media rights and negotiate monster TV contracts under an antitrust shield. But in college sports the things are different. The Big Ten negotiates its own media deals, and so do the SEC and other conferences. In that way, the Texas Tech billionaire argued that power conferences like the Big Ten and the SEC make enormous money. 

So, he argued that if college athletics got that same legal armor and sold its broadcast rights collectively instead of conference by conference, it could mint an extra $7 billion. The eight-page memo, titled “Preserving Autonomy and Stability in College Sports: Why Media Rights Pooling and SBA Reform are Misguided,” did not mention Campbell’s name. However, they took a direct aim at Campbell’s SCS proposal and rejected it. 

Their reason for rejection? The conference described the Texas Tech billionaire’s proposal as “well-intentioned but misguided strategy.” The memo raises a red flag. If rights are pooled, scheduling could become centralized. They fear this is a shift that might undercut non-conference games and chip away at the sport’s most cherished rivalries.

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Another big argument that puts Campbell’s proposal in the back seat? The 10 FBS conferences and Notre Dame are already locked into TV deals that run through 2036, all on different clocks. The white paper warns that reshaping those contracts to pooling might trigger legal battles.

“Centralizing college sports media rights will also introduce significant operational and legal risk into the system,” mentioned the memo, further pushing away the Texas Tech booster’s proposal. “Accompanying legislative proposals, like the SAFE Act, would consolidate sports media rights and appoint a federally established panel with little or no sports media experience tasked with negotiating the media rights distribution agreements for all 136 FBS programs and managing the scheduling and production of literally thousands of games.”

Campbell, facing the resistance, is natural. The Big Ten and SEC argue that history is not in favor of centralized control. The NCAA’s centralized TV model was dismantled by the Supreme Court in 1984. The College Football Association followed with a 60-plus-school bundle in the 1980s. But even then, it failed to match what conferences later gathered on their own.

Now, what’s next for Campbell after facing rejection?

A historic roundtable will have the Texas Tech Red Raiders’ billionaire.

President Donald Trump has always kept track of football. But lately his interest in college football has grown. With the playoff expansion on its way, the president took a firm step. He is now working to stop the famous Army-Navy rivalry from being removed from the schedule. For that, he is working to sign a Historic Executive Order, securing an exclusive 4-hour broadcast window.

A few days later, he was spotted with Urban Meyer, Nick Saban, and the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, playing golf. But behind, holding the club sick, all of them had a discussion on how to tighten the NIL guardrails. According to the latest reports, Texas Tech’s Campbell got an invitation from Trump.

“President Donald Trump is hosting a roundtable on issues facing college sports, Ross Dellenger reports,” an On3 X post reads. “Invitees include Nick Saban, Tiger Woods, Tim Tebow, Cody Campbell, and more.”

However, according to On3’s Pete Nakos’ reporting, the Big Ten’s Tony Petitti and the SEC’s Greg Sankey are set to receive an invitation to the White House. So, can we expect Trump to step in as the ultimate negotiator, finding common ground between Campbell’s SCS push and the conferences that are standing firmly against it?