Texas Tech AD acknowledges what no one else will admit about college sports
The President of the United States recently led a conversation (photo op’?) with leaders in college sports to find solutions for an industry that simultaneously prints and loses money like no other in our society.
Meanwhile, according to Yahoo Sports!, a collection of university leaders from the power conferences, which includes TCU, participated in a sit-down on Tuesday in Dallas on the future of college athletics with Satan ... sorry, I mean private equity. Not Satan. Honest mistake.
College sports is like a boxer; even after winning a big prize fight, they always need money.
The people who should be scared the most at the thought of private equity in college sports are all assistant coaches in non-revenue sports, second-tier staffers and anyone in an athletic department who can be easily fired, eliminated by AI or replaced by Labradoodle.
There is a reason why leadership at USC and Michigan successfully fought the Big Ten on including private equity in that league; it adds more voices to a discussion that already has plenty. The difference is the private equity voice has no tie to a school, the aspiration that is higher ed, but is led by the shark-like goal of margin, and getting theirs at the expense of others, or any remotely noble ambition.
Texas Tech AD calls for government assistance
Nothing is going to stop Texas from playing Alabama, or Michigan playing Ohio State, but college sports now is in a money fight between TheBIGSEC10, and everyone else.
No one does, or should, believe the respective commissioners of the Big Ten and the SEC when they speak about the greater good of college athletics when for the past however many years their priority has been to fleece other conferences of some of their premium brands to enhance their bottom line.
What the Big Ten did to the Pac-12 was disgusting. If Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti and SEC commissioner Greg Sankey are offering you a free piece of lemon cake, the first thing you need to do is check it for uranium.
“I think we’re in a time right now where, unfortunately, people are not coming to the table with the good of the enterprise,” Texas Tech athletic director Kirby Hocutt recently told the Star-Telegram in an interview before an alumni event in Dallas.
“First and foremost, everybody continues to look out for their own individual situation. And that’s unfortunate. It’s disappointing. That’s why we’ve unfortunately arrived at a point in time where you look to federal government for some type of assistance.”
The expected wait time for anything that “requires” government assistance is somewhere between 18 and 218 months.
Change in NCAA sports is going to take a while
People in college sports have sought government assistance for the last 20-plus years — lawmakers in Utah once wanted elected officials to do something about the BCS — and historically the House and Senate have been reluctant to touch this beyond empty rhetorical grandstanding in search of easy publicity.
(Don’t worry, we see you Sen. Tommy Tuberville).
The current climate is different because it’s not just a few schools looking for help, but dozens of public universities all over the United States. Phrases such as “This is not sustainable,” and “We’re at a breaking point” are now said in college athletics almost as frequently as “We’re over budget.”
When Ohio State president Ted Carter is concerned about the money out the door, there are issues. When big donors all over the U.S., people who have access to the president, university chancellors, and athletic directors, all say, “We are tired of this,” people tend to listen and act.
There is collective momentum, and pressure, on lawmakers to devise what amounts to an enforceable salary cap.
“Every athletic director in the country is spending a considerable amount of time trying to generate ‘above the cap’ dollars to give your programs a competitive advantage,” Hocutt said. “Is that what we all thought was coming a year ago? No. It’s the reality of today’s world.”
There is collective momentum, and pressure, on lawmakers to do something to essentially curb TheBigSEC10 from expanding its monopoly of major college sports.
Some of this is anchored around governance, and enforcement of rules, something that the NCAA did for decades until it was neutered through an endless series of lawsuits. The rest is focused on money, and broadcast media rights contracts, specifically a 1961 piece of legislation that Texas Tech booster Cody Campbell has made a priority to change.
Parallels have been drawn to the NFL, or NBA, but major NCAA sports operate across a variety of vastly different universities that function under different laws, making unity, and forget collective bargaining, a nightmare.
“It’s going to be incredibly difficult and challenging,” Hocutt said. “So, I think somehow, some way we’ve got to get the most influential individuals to the table. University presidents. Conference commissioners.”
That part is happening, albeit these people can’t even agree to all sit in the same room together.
This story was originally published March 4, 2026 at 6:00 AM.
