by Patrick Zier | Dec 30, 2025 |
Texas Tech has the best team money can buy and now, it’s trying to prove it’s college football’s best team – period.
Texas Tech meets Oregon in one of the CFP’s quarterfinal games Thursday, and both are symbolic of the new model for team building as we move into a new era for college athletics.
In short, money talks. Take Texas Tech, the latest and best example. Once the courts threw out all the rules and regulations governing college sports, the best way to get the best players and build the best teams was to buy them.
And after years of being mired in mediocrity; Texas Tech had never won a Big 12 championship before this year despite being one of the league’s founding members in 1996, some big donors said “enough”.
Led by Cody Campbell, chairman of the Board of Regents and founder of Double Eagle Energy, Texas Tech boosters poured millions into the program this year. They spent $12 million on 21 transfer portal players and put another $28 million into NIL and roster building.
Armed with his new bank roll, Texas Tech’s veteran coach, Joey McGuire, totally reshaped his team. To go along with the new players, he brought in new offensive and defensive coordinators and made other changes in his coaching staff.
The model was Oregon, which, with backing from Phil Knight and Nike, has been at this for a while and transformed Oregon into a national power. It’s estimated that Oregon’s roster this year cost over $40 million.
“First, they’ve (Oregon) done a good job of hiring coaches,” McGuire commented at a press conference before Thursday’s game. “(Dan) Lanning was a slam dunk.
“Second, they’ve made it cool to be an Oregon Duck. I mean they’ve got every uniform known to man and players love that. With Adidas and Patrick Mahomes, We’re doing the same thing,” McGuire continued.
“We’re really fortunate with Adidas as our partner,” McGuire went on. “We’ve got some great looks.
“And then you know they’ve got a great booster in Phil Knight who said ‘Hey, we’re going to win at the highest level and there’s no excuses when it comes to finances.’
“And you know, you turn that around and I think we’ve shown that we’re doing that. I think we’re really comparable (to Oregon). We’ve got guys that have really stepped up and done a great job,” McGuire said.
“I kind of call them the big five,” McGuire said of the quintet, all of whom are worth millions and at least one of whom, Cody Campbell, is worth billions.
“Whenever you talk about Cody and John (Sellers) and Mike (Wallace) and Dusty (Womble) and Gary (Petersen), those guys and everybody else in Red Raider nation, we’re kind of comparable (to Oregon) on and off the field. They’ve just done it for a little longer,” McGuire said.
“He’s built a great roster,” Oregon’s Lanning said of McGuire, also at a press conference before their playoff game. “College football’s about adapting and this (Texas Tech) is obviously a program that’s done an unbelievable job adapting and saying ‘OK, let’s make our team the best it can possibly be’.
“They’ve done that this year,” Lanning said. “So they deserve credit for that because you have to evaluate; there’s a lot of teams that take people out of the portal, right?
“There’s not a lot of teams that necessarily have success,” Lanning continued. “It’s about evaluating that talent, getting them to play together and creating a team that does that. This is a team that’s done that.
“There’s just kind of an admiration and respect for teams that are doing it at a high level and Texas Tech’s certainly one of those teams.”
While some play down Texas Tech’s accomplishments because they don’t consider the Big 12 to be a very strong conference, Lanning is not one of them.
“Good football is good football and I’ve kind of always said that regardless of what conference you’re in,” Lanning remarked. “Are you playing a high level of ball? and these guys (Texas Tech) play a really high level of football, right?
“And they’ve not just beaten opponents, they’ve dominated them, right? And to dominate the way they’ve dominated speaks volumes about what kind of team this is. So we’ve got a ton of respect for them because they’ve got the winning formula.”
That may be true, and it is true that Texas Tech has turned things around and accomplished a lot this year. Beating Oregon, though, will require Tech’s best effort, because these Ducks aren’t quacks.
by Patrick Zier | Dec 6, 2025 |
For Brian Hartline, who will be officially announced as South Florida’s new coach Monday, the job isn’t about picking up the pieces, starting over. His job will be to build on the foundation Alex Golish has laid down.
Hartline appears to be a solid hire. He is highly regarded as Ohio State’s offensive coordinator and considered an outstanding recruiter. He has an impressive pedigree as a player, first at Ohio State and then in the NFL.
His approach will no doubt be different from Golishes; it is likely to be less intense because Hartline appears more confident than Golish, who seemed to be driven, in large part, by a need to prove himself.
The unexpected end of the Golish era was a sharp contrast from its beginnings. At least publicly, it was somewhat messy and tumultuous, a bit out of control. And that was totally different from the way Golish ran his program, where everything seemed precisely planned and well thought out with definite goals in mind.
It appears that Golish was more open with the USF administration, which seemed to know he had gotten some offers and was considering them, than he was with the media and the USF fan base.
Even as more and more reports linking him to other jobs surfaced, Golish continued to insist he wasn’t seeking other opportunities, that he was happy at USF and that he hadn’t completed his rebuild yet. All of that was undoubtedly true.
It was what he didn’t say that was troubling. While he said he wasn’t seeking other jobs, he didn’t say he wouldn’t consider other offers. And all the talk about being happy in Tampa and having all the resources he needed to build a nationally relevant program at USF, which gave the impression he wasn’t going to leave, was misleading at best and dishonest at worst.
And so Golesh has packed up and headed to Auburn, a step up from USF but a gamble on his part. In many ways, Auburn is much like Tennessee, where Golesh was before he came to USF. Both schools have a rich SEC history and are trying to reclaim it. This is particularly true of Auburn, which has struggled to reach the .500 mark over the last several seasons.
At USF, Golesh pretty much had a straight line to football success. The Bulls have made and are making sizable investments in new facilities and a stadium. They plan to spend the full $20.5 million allotted to schools in recent court settlements on players, the only Group of 5 school to do so.
If all goes well, meaning primarily if it can bring in enough money to pay for the stadium, USF will have an advantage virtually every year as far as being the Group of 5 representative in the College Football Playoffs.
In contrast, Auburn has some huge hurdles to overcome just to be competitive in the SEC, and even being competitive is no guarantee you will get to the championship game or the playoffs.
So Hartline takes over USF at a time when the school seems ready to break out of the American, to establish itself as a mid-major, not quite up to Power 4 standards but a notch above everybody in the Group of 5. And that’s a very advantageous position to be in.
“Brian Hartline was our clear-cut first choice to lead our football program into the most exciting era in program history and I am fired up to have him leading the Bulls,” Rob Higgins, CEO of Athletics, said in a USF press release.
“A relentless recruiter, outstanding developer of talent and a gritty competitor, he comes from a championship background and is obsessed with instilling championship excellence in his players and teams. He is ready to lead our program to the next level,” Higgins said.
And Hartline is off to a good start. Even with Golesh gone, USF’s recruiting class pretty much held together on early signing day. According to rivals.com, the Bulls signed the 10th best class among all Group of 5 teams and the third best in the American. And as yet, we have not heard anything about a mass exodus of players via the transfer portal.
“Coach Brian Hartline is a proven winner who has experienced success at the highest level,” Will Weatherford, USF Board of Trustees chair, commented, also in the press release. Weatherford was the driving force behind getting a stadium built and most of the other infrastructure improvements in USF’s athletic facilities.
“He (Hartline) shares our vision for winning championships, developing student-athletes and providing them with a world-class experience and positioning our university on the national stage,” Weatherford added.
So USF is ready to roll. Let the games begin.
