By Sam Khan Jr., Bruce Feldman and Justin Williams
Texas Tech continues to be a major player in college sports’ new era of player compensation, with the latest evidence coming in the form of a football recruiting coup.
The Red Raiders landed a commitment on Friday from five-star offensive tackle Felix Ojo, the No. 1 recruit in Texas and a top 10 national recruit in the 2026 class, after the parties agreed to a three-year, $2.3 million revenue-sharing contract, two school sources confirmed to The Athletic on Saturday.
Ojo, a 6-foot-6, 275-pound recruit from Lake Ridge High in Mansfield, Texas, was one of the most heavily recruited prospects in the country, with 50 scholarship offers, according to 247Sports. In addition to Texas Tech, Ojo took official visits to Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Ole Miss, Texas and Utah. If Ojo officially signs with the Red Raiders during the December signing period, he would be the highest-rated prospect Texas Tech has signed in the modern recruiting era and the second five-star, joining 2024 receiver Micah Hudson. Ojo is the No. 7 recruit in the 247Sports Composite and No. 6 in the On3 Industry rankings.
It was a bit of a surprise on the recruiting trail, as Ojo’s reported finalists were Texas, Ohio State, Michigan and Florida, with the Longhorns and Buckeyes leading the race in the home stretch, according to Rivals.com. But Texas Tech, which has proved to be one of the biggest spenders in name, image and likeness compensation in the last year, remained firmly in the recruitment — even if not publicly — since Ojo’s official visit to Lubbock in April.
During his commitment announcement on Friday, Ojo initially put on a Longhorns hat before switching to a Texas Tech hat.
Mansfield Lake Ridge 5-star offensive lineman Felix Ojo first puts on a Texas hat, and the crowd goes wild, then he pulls a surprise and says he is actually committing to Texas Tech.#txhsfb @SportsDayHS @dctf @MISDathletics @247sports @TexasTechFB @TexasFootball @Rivals pic.twitter.com/WwbhCpjS3S
— Greg Riddle (@DMNGregRiddle) July 4, 2025
ESPN reported on Friday that Ojo was receiving a three-year deal worth $5.1 million, according to his agent, Derrick Shelby of Prestige Management. Shelby confirmed those figures to The Athletic on Saturday, but three Texas Tech sources refuted that number, with two confirming that Ojo is scheduled to receive an annual compensation of $775,000 per year for three years from Tech’s revenue-sharing pool. Ojo’s deal, according to a Tech source, includes a verbal agreement that can escalate the total value of the contract into the $5 million range if there were a large jump in the revenue sharing cap for schools or if there is minimal regulation of schools’ adhering to the cap, in much the way there has been minimal regulation of NIL since its institution in 2021. Shelby declined to share a copy of the contract with The Athletic but stood by the initially reported numbers.
The news of Ojo’s commitment and contract agreement represents the continued changing tides of college recruiting. After the approval of the House v. NCAA settlement and implementation of revenue sharing, colleges can allocate up to roughly $20.5 million to pay athletes across their sponsored sports. Schools could begin directly paying players on their current roster on July 1. They can verbally negotiate deals with future recruits and send official written scholarship offers and revenue-sharing contract offers beginning Aug. 1 of the recruit’s senior year of high school, but those contracts cannot be signed until each respective sport’s signing period begins, which is Dec. 3 for the FBS.
The national letter of intent program, which used to bind a recruit to a school, was eliminated by the NCAA in October and replaced by financial aid agreements that prohibited other schools from recruiting a prospect once signed.
Texas Tech has been aggressive in the NIL space in recent years and will continue to be in the revenue sharing era. The Matador Club, the school’s NIL collective, was one of the first to implement team-wide NIL contracts for football players in 2022. The Red Raiders made a splash in softball, signing former Stanford pitcher NiJaree Canady to a one-year deal worth more than $1 million last summer (Canady led Tech to the Women’s College World Series final, where the Red Raiders lost to Texas). In men’s basketball, the team retained second-team All-American JT Toppin to a deal of more than $3 million in April.
Tech’s football team spent more than $10 million on its transfer portal class this offseason, landing multiple highly coveted transfers, including former North Carolina offensive tackle Howard Sampson, former Stanford edge rusher David Bailey and former Georgia Tech edge rusher Romello Height. The Red Raiders’ portal signing class is ranked No. 1 by On3 and No. 2 by 247Sports.
Billionaire oil magnate Cody Campbell, a former Texas Tech offensive lineman, co-founder of the Matador Club and chairman of the school’s board of regents, told The Athletic last month that Tech would spend an estimated $55 million combined in revenue-sharing dollars and NIL money for players across the athletic department for the 2025-26 cycle. After the House settlement approval, the Matador Club merged with Texas Tech’s Red Raider Club, the longtime donor arm of Texas Tech athletics.
Ojo’s commitment was part of a successful recruiting week for Texas Tech, as they also landed commitments from four-star running back Ashton Rowden and four-star cornerback Donovan Webb. Ojo, Rowden and Webb are the three highest-rated commits in Tech’s 2026 class, which is currently No. 24 in the country, according to 247Sports. Texas Tech is also considered to be in a strong position to land a commitment from Cooper Hackett, a five-star offensive tackle in the 2027 class from Fort Gibson, Okla. Both 247Sports and On3 have predicted Tech to land a commitment from Hackett.
If Texas Tech is able to close on Ojo and Hackett, that would make three five-star commits in four recruiting cycles for the Red Raiders, who did not sign a five-star high school recruit from 2000 to 2023.
(Photo of Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire: Justin Ford / Getty Images)
