Texas Tech megabooster Cody Campbell and Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark have engaged in a war of words through the media and Twitter this week. Frankly, it’s not a good look for the Big 12. 

The issue at hand is Texas Tech’s Week 3 home game against Houston potentially moving to Friday night. But really, the bigger problem is a strained relationship between a school poised to become the Big 12’s biggest brand and the league itself.

Whether you’re a Big 12 fan upset with Tech or a Tech fan upset with the Big 12, I hope you’ll approach this with an open mind. 

There is a legitimate discussion to be had here, and it does everyone a disservice to limit it to 280 characters of emotion and anger on Twitter. 

Campbell first sounded the alarm about the possibility of the Houston game being moved in a tweet earlier this week. 

He went on to tell the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal that he believes it’s already a done deal behind the scenes.

Texas Tech has plenty of reasons to be less than thrilled by this. 

On paper, it looks like the biggest home game on Tech’s schedule. This could very well be a matchup of two ranked teams. And the Red Raiders are playing at Oregon State the week before, which could end up in a late-night window. That would create a preparation disadvantage because of the travel.

A Friday home game is also tough to get to if you don’t live in Lubbock. You might have to use PTO just to make it there. It’s a bummer for fans.

And as Campbell said, it’s also a bummer for the local high school teams. Campbell’s son plays high school football, so now he has to choose between his son’s game and the Tech game. He’s far from the only one who will have to make that choice. 

Playing college football on Friday nights isn’t anybody’s ideal situation. You do it because of TV. 

TV networks love having standalone, or close to standalone, games in non-Saturday windows. It gives them strong ratings in slots that would otherwise be mundane.

The Big 12 is in a position where it needs to squeeze everything it can out of its TV deals to stay within shouting distance of the SEC and Big Ten. Playing in creative windows adds value to your TV partners and, in some cases, gives your games better ratings, which helps increase your value the next time your TV rights go to market. 

Yormark pointed out to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal and The Athletic that all of the league ADs, including Tech AD Kirby Hocutt, signed off on the contract that includes 12 non-Saturday games for the league. The Big 12 played 11 games on Friday last year. Houston played in two of them. 

The Big 12 has put high-profile games on Friday before. In 2024, No. 14 K-State and No. 20 Arizona played on a Friday night in Manhattan. The Wildcats were also coming off a road trip to Tulane. And perennial Kansas 6A power Manhattan High had to deal with the scheduling overlap.

So this isn’t unique. Every school across the league has to suck it up at some point and make a sacrifice for the greater good of the conference when it comes to Friday night games.

Yormark also made sure to tell the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal this: 

“Cody Campbell does not run the Big 12.”

Now, a part of Campbell’s beef with Yormark that I can’t really speak to is how much influence the Big 12 actually has over which games get put on Friday. 

Fox and ESPN have a draft to pick which games they want, but how much could Yormark push Fox to keep it on Saturday in hopes of landing it in the Big Noon window? I honestly don’t know.

Outside of Lane Kiffin’s return to Ole Miss that Saturday, the slate does not look very strong on paper. There’s absolutely a case to be made that this game could still get plenty of attention and land in a nice Big Noon Saturday slot, but Fox seems to have other ideas.

Campbell told the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal that the league can and should do more to make that happen, but he also conceded that they’re chasing ratings, which he understands “on one hand.”

"They (TV partners) have the draft or whatever, and the conference doesn't want to really acknowledge it, but they do have an ability to influence those decisions. They just chose not to because they were chasing ratings — which I do understand on one hand, but on the other hand, high school football is important in the state of Texas.”

Yormark told The Athletic that Friday Big 12 games outperform the conference’s average game rating by 64%, for what it’s worth.

Ultimately, Yormark is trying to do the same thing Campbell is trying to do through his Saving College Sports initiative: generate as much money as possible for the member schools so they can pay for, among other things, Olympic sports and women’s sports. 

Saving Olympic sports and women’s sports is why Campbell wants to amend the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 to allow conferences to pool all of their media rights together. The idea is that it would generate more money to preserve all sports.

Yormark is trying to give the league schools as much of an edge as he can. 

Look, it’s not ideal to have one of your biggest games of the season on a Friday night. Tech would be the latest, and not the last, team put at a minor disadvantage because of it. But it appears to be a necessary evil. Other teams have dealt with it and will continue to deal with it. And the Big 12 might not even have full control over the situation.

Yormark is far from perfect. And as much as I love what Campbell is doing with Saving College Sports, he isn’t either. 

I really think this is a fair debate, with both sides making legitimate points. 

My bigger concern, though, is what appears to be a growing rift between Tech and the Big 12. 

This is how Campbell responded to Yormark’s statement that Campbell doesn’t run the Big 12. 

I think Campbell’s response says a lot about the tension that exists between Tech and Yormark right now. Many in the fan base still have raw feelings about the Big 12 taking away the Red Raiders’ tradition of throwing tortillas. 

Toss this on top of it, and the animosity is only building.

Campbell’s tweet is pouring fuel on that fire, and he knows it. He is the most recognizable Tech alum besides Patrick Mahomes and has the fan base in the palm of his hand.

I don’t think the most productive way to solve the issues between Tech and the Big 12 is through a public sparring match that unfolds 280 characters at a time. It certainly is not good for the Big 12’s image.

But Campbell is a powerful multibillionaire with legitimate connections in Washington, D.C., and he is going to fight to get what he wants. There is something to be said for that.

At the same time, you can’t blame Big 12 fans for having some Texas flashbacks right now. The Longhorns demanded special treatment from day one in the league and almost singlehandedly drove Nebraska to the Big Ten. Their demands always created tension and instability within the league. 

At the end of the day, the Big 12 needs Texas Tech. The Red Raiders are making a financial commitment to winning on par with the top brands in the SEC and Big Ten. They appear poised to be the class of the conference for the foreseeable future, though we are only one football season into that trajectory.

But here’s the thing: Texas Tech needs the Big 12, too. There isn’t an SEC or Big Ten invite sitting in the mail. That’s not something they can leverage against Yormark.

If the Red Raiders dominate the league for another five years, maybe that becomes a different story. But right now, both sides are stuck with each other.

So they need to find a way to patch up this relationship and work together better for the sake of everyone involved. It’s not a good look for the league to be having public spats with a high-profile member, and being publicly unruly toward the commissioner is not making Tech more attractive to the SEC and Big Ten.

Here’s to hoping for a more harmonious future in Big 12 country.

What You Need to Know

• Bill Self is returning to Kansas for another season. Can he still win at an elite level in the NIL/transfer portal era?

• Tommy Lloyd again turned down an opportunity to deny interest in the North Carolina job. His relationship with his AD at Arizona seems to be a problem. 

• K-State lost out on one of new head coach Casey Alexander’s best players from Belmont in the transfer portal.  

• Chris Klieman is returning to K-State to work as a consultant.

• The Iowa State women’s basketball team lost its best player to the transfer portal.

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