All In Texas Tech Spurns Notre Dame

This year’s Texas Tech transfer portal class turned heads across the country. It finished third nationally, behind only LSU and Ole Miss.  

It turns out one of those heads belongs to Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman, who tried to hire away Tech GM James Blanchard, the architect of the class. 

In a massive move for the Red Raiders and the Big 12, Blanchard chose to stay in Lubbock this week and agreed to a new three-year contract worth $1.575 million. 

The big boys come sniffing around the Big 12 for coaches all the time these days. Iowa State head coach Matt Campbell has been listed as a candidate in so many searches that it’s become a meme. K-State head coach Chris Klieman and Kansas head coach Lance Leipold aren’t far behind Campbell, either. Both Kansas schools lost their offensive coordinators last winter to the Big Ten and SEC. 

So it’s a really encouraging sign to see a Big 12 school get a win like this over a program that just played for the national championship. That will only get more difficult to do with the growing disparity in TV revenue between conferences in the looming revenue-sharing era. 

But Texas Tech is all in right now, and I love their strategy. ESPN’s Max Olson gave us all a fabulous inside look at how the Red Raiders are pushing their chips to the center of the table in 2025. 

Once revenue sharing kicks in, a cap will be established every year that limits the amount of money spent on players to 22% of media rights, ticket sales, and sponsorships. That cap is on target to be $20.5 million in year one. 

Not all of that will be spent on the football roster. Most estimations come in at about $14 or $15 million for the football program. 

Players can earn money beyond that, but as I discussed earlier this week, it will have to be in “fair market value” NIL deals. That puts some legitimate barriers on what you can spend. 

But it won’t start until the 2026 football season, at the earliest. 

For now, it’s the wild, wild west. And Texas Tech is taking advantage. 

Olson’s article explains that the Red Raiders paid $10 million for 17 players in the portal this year. The rest of the roster also has to be paid, so you can imagine the total price tag. 

Billionaire booster Cody Campbell is bankrolling it all and told Olson that he realized they should take a big swing this year before the cap kicks in. This will be the last year of the total free-for-all, pay-for-play era, which presents a unique opportunity.

Campbell is far from the first to realize this. Listen to what K-State men’s basketball head coach Jerome Tang told me on the 3MAW podcast this fall. 

Look, I love this strategy. Schools like Tech and K-State have big, passionate fan bases that desperately want to win at the highest level but have historically dealt with hurdles to get the talent they need to do so. 

For Tech, it means doing everything they can to win a Big 12 championship in football. The Red Raiders are 52-82 in the Big 12 since Mike Leach left town. Joey McGuire just put together the best three-year stretch in the post-Leach era, so they’re trying to capitalize. 

For K-State, it means winning the school’s first national championship. The Wildcats have won five football and basketball Big 12 championships and made the elite eight three times in the last fifteen years, but a title has been elusive. 

But Tang is a cautionary tale for what Texas Tech is trying to do. The price tag for the Wildcats’ basketball roster is in the ballpark of what the Red Raiders paid for their football portal class, yet K-State was 7-11 less than a month ago. 

They’ve rebounded and might still make the tournament, but it took far too long for the pieces to fit together. 

Can Tech head coach Joey McGuire figure it out in time to get the Red Raiders to finally break through the 8-4 ceiling and make it to the playoff?

Time will tell, but I’m fascinated to watch. And even if it doesn’t, they still have Blanchard, the mastermind behind it all, to lead another run at it next year.

What You Need to Know

• Speaking of Jerome Tang and K-State, they knocked off #13 Arizona 73-70 to win a sixth straight game after starting the year 1-6 in the conference. Three weeks ago, KenPom gave the Wildcats a .05% chance to win all six games, including victories over Iowa State, Kansas, and Arizona. Bart Torvik continues to show that K-State has played like the number-one team in the country over that six-game span. 

• For their efforts, the Wildcats have been rewarded with a spot on Joe Lunardi’s Bracketology graphic. After the win over Arizona, K-State is now in the next four-out category. BYU is currently the next-to-last team in the field, and the Cougars will host K-State on Saturday in Provo. 

• It was a wild Wednesday night in the Big 12, too. TCU beat Oklahoma State on a crazy last-second three from Vasean Allette, and #12 Texas Tech needed double overtime to hold off Arizona State in Lubbock. Houston is still alone in first-place in the league, with Tech two games back and Arizona one game behind. 

• BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe announced this week that he will retire at the end of the 2024-25 athletic season. Holmoe has been at BYU for over 20 years and oversaw the Cougars’ move to the Big 12. BYU won four national championships during his tenure, and hires like Bronco Mendenhall, Kalani Sitake, Dave Rose, Mark Pope, and Kevin Young have significantly elevated the football and men’s basketball programs in Provo. Here’s a look at who could replace him. 

• K-State’s football staff hired from within to replace offensive coordinator and offensive line coach Conor Riley, who left to become the Dallas Cowboys offensive line coach. Former Texas Tech head coach Matt Wells, K-State’s co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach last year, will take over as the offensive coordinator. Brian Lepak moves from tight ends coach to offensive line coach. Expect an outside hire for the tight ends job. 

• Legendary West Virginia quarterback Pat White is joining Rich Rodriguez’s staff in Morgantown. He will serve as assistant quarterbacks coach and assistant to the head coach. White started at WVU from 2005 to 2007 and got the Mountaineers up to as high as #2 in the country. My guy Mountaineer Paul broke the story and has some great insight on Locked On West Virginia.

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