What’s going on in the Big 12 and beyond? I expand and explain every Sunday in Postscripts at Heartland College Sports, your home for independent Big 12 coverage.
It’s been a few weeks since we’ve convened for Postscripts. Sorry, NCAA Tournament coverage. Rangers opening day. The usual stuff. But let’s dig in.
Why is Cody Campbell So Mad?
Honestly I didn’t want to spend two days thinking about why Texas Tech booster and board of regents president Cody Campbell was mad at Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark. But their disagreement over the potential for Texas Tech playing a Friday night football game basically took over the news cycle for two days. So, let’s talk about it.
As someone who has covered Texas high school football off and on for 20 years, I get Campbell’s argument. High school football is a huge deal in the state of Texas and that’s hard to understand if you haven’t experienced it. For instance, I went to a high school football game in Buffalo in September and the contrast is incredible. It was chilliest crowd I’ve ever been around at a high school football game.
I have been to those small towns and covered games where the only person working on a Friday night was the guy behind the counter at the gas station. The streets don’t literally roll up at sundown, as some like to say, but it’s kind of close.
But let’s be clear — Texas colleges have been asked to play non-Saturday games for nearly three decades. When the Southwest Conference broke up the schools that didn’t make the Big 12 had to go to conferences like Conference USA. Every year I would go to Texas High School Coaches Association events, and we would get 15 minutes with every college head coach in the state. It was an opportunity for us to ask them questions about players from our area that were on their teams.
I remember distinctly back in 1999 that the coaches at Houston, Rice, and TCU were all being peppered with questions about potentially playing football games on Friday night. Many of them didn’t like it. But they also understood why their conferences were doing it. They were looking for exposure. They were looking for exclusive television windows. So, they did it. Their fan bases were a little ticked. The high school football fan bases in their area were a little ticked. But they got over it —which is part of the reason why they’re still doing it.
The dynamic is a little bit different now. The Big 12, historically, hasn’t played many off-Saturday games aside from Thanksgiving weekend. I went back and looked at the last 10 years of the conference. And if you look back from 2016 to 2022, there were only a handful of non-Saturday games. That includes Thursday and Friday games in conference action only and excludes Thanksgiving.
What I thought was interesting was that both Texas and Oklahoma played a Thursday game while they were in the conference. I covered one of them. It was back in 2016 when Texas went to Iowa State. So, everyone did it. Even Texas Tech. The Red Raiders have played three non-Saturday games in the last 10 years, all on Thursday. And they do play high school football in Texas on Thursday too.
The Pac-12 kind of owned Friday nights for a while until the league disintegrated. That opened up a window and the Big 12 pounced. Arizona and Kansas State played both of their non-conference matchups in this slot. In fact, UBBig12 on X (formerly Twitter) did the same research I did and found that in the last two years 13 of the league’s 16 teams have played on Friday night. The only ones that haven’t are Cincinnati, Iowa State and Texas Tech.
Houston has played five non-Saturday games in conference since it joined the league. That’s more non-Saturday games in conference play for any Big 12 school in the last 10 years. The Cougars love that time slot.
Each Big 12 member signed the TV contract. Yormark didn’t unilaterally negotiate a deal without their approval. Every school’s administration signed it. Part of that deal is the potential for a Friday night window for Big 12 games. It’s part of the deal. It’s a shared responsibility for everyone to shoulder that load. That doesn’t mean that every single team must play a Friday game every year. But you don’t get to exclude yourself for, well, reasons.
Yormark and Campbell fired back at each other with a “he doesn’t run the Big 12” burn that really wasn’t a burn so much as it was the truth. Campbell doesn’t run the Big 12. He and Texas Tech have 1/16th of a say. Yormark doesn’t run the Big 12. If he did, the league would have a $2 billion private equity war chest and UConn and Gonzaga would be in the league for basketball. He doesn’t unilaterally make big decisions, just as Texas Tech doesn’t get to herd the league in a particular direction. Everyone must work together to get things done. Campbell glowering on social media about having to play on a Friday night doesn’t change that. Neither does Yormark firing back.
Everyone agreed to this. It’s good for the league. Tech and Houston on a Friday night in Lubbock will be great TV and will do great ratings for the league. What other game is going to be on TV that night? It’s really Much Ado About Nothing.
So then why is Cody Campbell mad at Brett Yormark?
I don’t think Campbell’s that mad about this. I do think he’s frustrated. In the larger picture of college athletics he and Yormark don’t align on two huge issues.
The first is television. Campbell wants to pool all the FBS TV money like the NFL so that everyone can benefit. Yormark and the other Power 4 commissioner are cool to the idea.
The other piece is playing players. Campbell went all-in to bankroll NIL for football this past season, knowing a cap is coming. But the cap isn’t working. Yormark supports the College Sports Commission, which is trying to make that work. Tech is one of several schools that hasn’t signed the paperwork to be governed by the CSC. If it comes down to it, who do you think Campbell is going to side with?
I think their disagreement earlier this week was more about what’s happening in those areas than one football game on a Friday night. So that’s why I think Cody Campbell is mad at Brett Yormark.
