Who is billionaire Cody Campbell? Meet Nick Saban’s co-chair for President Donald Trump’s commission

United States President Donald Trump is expected to name Nick Saban co-chair of the Presidential Commission studying college sports.

Along with Saban, On3 college football insider Pete Nakos revealed that Texas Tech NIL collective founder Cody Campbell will be the co-commissioner with Nick Saban.

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Campbell was elected chairman of the Texas Tech Board of Regents last month. The billionaire played college football at Texas Tech. After playing football, he was the co-founder and co-executive of Double Eagle Energy Holdings, which is an oil and gas company. The company operates in the Permian Basin region of West Texas.

In 2021, Campbell's Double Eagle sold a development for $4.1 billion, and in 2021, the company sold a previous development for $6.4 billion.

Along with owning the oil and gas company, Campbell also the co-founder of the Matador Club, an NIL collective that supports Texas Tech athletics, as well as being a board member of Texas Public Policy Foundation.

At Texas Tech, Campbell recently helped build a $242 million south endzone project at Tech’s Jones AT&T Stadium, which overlooks Cody Campbell Field.

Cody Campbell explains the major change he wants in college sports

Cody Campbell has been advocating for changes in college sports before being named the co-commissioner alongside Nick Saban.

Speaking on SiriusXM College Sports Radio, Campbell said college sports need a major change, which includes changes in media rights and conferences.

“College sports, unlike pro sports, does not have the right to pool its media rights together and act as a single seller to the media companies,” Campbell said, via On3. “Because of that, the conferences compete with one another for media deals. That dynamic has caused them to get less money per viewer than the pro sports do.

"The NBA has about half as many viewers as college football, but they get twice as much money than college football does, which is crazy. And it’s all because of this legal setup that we have. That needs to change. So everybody needs to come together, pool their media rights and do a single, big media deal that will give college football more control and give college football more money. So expand the pie."

Campbell believes everyone needs to rethink and reshape college sports, and he hopes he can help reshape college sports.

About the author

Cole is an NHL, NFL and College Sports reporter at Sportskeeda with over 7 years of experience writing for publications like CBC, USA Today, SMG, BJPENN, Sherdog and SB Nation.

An NHL fan his whole life, Cole played rep hockey in Canada from age 5 until 17 and grew up rooting for Martin St. Louis and the Tampa Bay Lightning. His all-time favorite players are Vincent Lecavalier and Steven Stamkos, while Jon Cooper is his favorite coach of all time.

Cole attended Sheridan College and received his journalism degree in 2019. After decades of watching and reporting, he considers his knowledge of sports as his primary strength. He ensures that the same story has been reported by at least two reputed reporters before creating it.

Cole enjoys playing golf and spending time with friends and family when not reporting breaking stories. His favorite sports moment is from the 2010 Olympics, when Sidney Crosby scored the golden goal in overtime to beat Team USA for the gold medal.

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Edited by Cole Shelton