Texas Tech, The Matador Club provide road map for the future of college athletics

LUBBOCK – There’s too much green in Lubbock to consider it a desert – $2.5 million to be exact. That’s how much an NIL collective at Texas Tech is paying 100 football players – 85 scholarship and 15 walk-ons – with one-year contracts worth $25,000 per player in 2022. It is the first of its kind and a trend likely to be followed and duplicated across the ever-changing landscape of college football.

The group leading the charge is The Matador Club. The collective put this plan in place late in 2021 after Joey McGuire was hired to replace Matt Wells. College athletics are evolving, and the donor base at Texas Tech want to keep up. That takes money. And the Red Raiders appear flush with cash.