Texas Tech's Future in Recruiting with NIL, Revenue Sharing

Recruiting in college football seems to be consistently changing and here is a look at how Texas Tech has navigated through the evolving landscape of college football recruiting.

Texas Tech Red Raiders head coach Joey McGuire looks on during the game against the Utah Utes. Mandatory Credit: Rob Gray-Imagn Images | Rob Gray-Imagn Images

The effects of the July 2025 new college revenue-sharing arrangement resulting from the NCAA House settlement have drastically altered Texas Tech's recruiting strategy and its NIL collectives.

Here is a look at the impact on NIL collectives and the Texas Tech athletic department as it pertains to recruiting. According to the new model laid out by the NCAA, Texas Tech, a member of the Big 12 Conference, is allowed to distribute up to $20.5 million of its athletic earnings directly to its student-athletes per year.

In addition to the conventional Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL), there is also this revenue-sharing avenue that many college athletic departments are still trying to navigate and adhere to the new rules, but the rules of NIL and how student-athletes receive money through that avenue have changed since this past July.

For some schools, revenue sharing is a burden. For Texas Tech, it’s a game changer. We’re ready to compete at the highest level and your support makes that possible. Revenue Share lets Texas Tech play big - and win bigger.https://t.co/AxArhxuR17 pic.twitter.com/U2HzfoZNZR

— The Matador Club (@MatadorClubOrg) July 15, 2025

Collective integration in response to this change, Texas Tech has taken the initiative to combine The Matador Club, its main NIL collective, under the Red Raider Club. Through this consolidation, a single, cohesive fundraising organization will be in charge of producing the yearly funds required for scholarships, the new revenue-sharing model, and other athlete support initiatives. National media and onlookers have given the Texas Tech athletic department much praise for preparing itself for this change in how student-athletes are compensated financially.

Centralized funding, in an indication of an institutional commitment to this new age of compensation for student-athletes, the Red Raider Club is expected to generate a sizeable sum—roughly $14 million a year—to assist in funding the revenue-sharing model. Not too many college athletic programs are in as strong a position as Texas Tech.

Texas Tech says its fundraising arm, the Red Raider Club, will be responsible for generating $14 million annually to help fund its $20.5 million revenue-sharing model.

— Brandon Marcello (@bmarcello) June 9, 2025

Compliance and oversight present new challenges not for Texas Tech but for any Division I athletic department. To oversee the annual revenue share cap, administer the new university NIL agreements, and deal with third-party NIL reporting, institutions like Texas Tech have set up specialized compliance services. As a result, NIL operations are now formally in-house.

Frontloaded spending, to acquire top talent before the revenue-sharing limits went into effect, Texas Tech, according to multiple reports, spent a lot of money on NIL deals through the transfer portal in the months preceding the July 2025 cap. This was a plan to take advantage of the time before the complete deployment that took place this summer.

How this new revenue sharing will impact recruiting in the future is the issue that fans want answered.

Texas Tech's competitive recruitment position in comparison to other power four conference athletic departments is in a position of strength and meant to be stronger by the revenue-sharing model and an established NIL framework, especially for high-profile sports like basketball and football student athletes.

The economic benefit for Texas Tech allows it to give a strong financial pitch to both high school recruits and transfer portal targets because of its capacity to provide a direct, guaranteed source of compensation through revenue sharing in addition to significant third-party NIL deals, which are anticipated to continue. According to reports, Texas Tech anticipates paying out around $55 million in total compensation (revenue share + NIL) for all programs in the 2025–2026 academic year. This signals that Texas Tech's continued efforts in recruiting and the results it has produced are very likely to go on.

This is not to say that Texas Tech has not had challenges and obstacles in recent years. Universities in the state of Texas were not allowed to pay student-athletes directly for their NIL under Texas state law; however, this was only a temporary measure that has since been changed by new legislation.

At first, a 2021 law permitted athletes to make money through agents, NIL collectives, and third-party agreements, but not directly from the colleges. However, HB 126, a recent statute that was signed into law in 2025, permitted colleges to pay athletes directly, bringing Texas law into line with the evolving field of collegiate athletics and a major court settlement.

For recruitment and athlete compensation through the NCAA House settlement, which allows direct university revenue sharing, Texas Tech doesn't have many obstacles in its way to recruit the best student-athletes, especially for its football program, now as it did in the past.

The recruiting difference for Texas Tech in comparison to other athletic programs is due to the relationship between the Red Raiders' athletic department and their top donors. Third-party NIL money, which is mostly generated by unified collectives like the Red Raider Club, will continue to be a significant recruiting difference for Texas Tech when competing with other Power Four athletic departments.

Multi-million dollar NIL deals for top recruits and transfers demonstrate Texas Tech's donors' and boosters' willingness to make significant investments in convincing top elite talent to come to Lubbock. The pressure to succeed is still there, and the enormous financial commitment made to student-athletes results in soaring demands for on-field performance, especially for the football team, like the Red Raiders, which puts a great deal of pressure on players and coaches to win titles such as the Big 12 and possibly even a national title this season.

To put it all in perspective, Texas Tech's strong, cohesive collective continues to drive non-capped NIL funding, and the new revenue-sharing arrangement enables the school to centralize and formalize a portion of player compensation, resulting in a joint financial war chest intended to support elite recruiting and retention. It is complicated, but the Texas Tech athletic department has done a phenomenal job with this transition in the ever-changing college football recruiting landscape.

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