Joey McGuire stresses the importance of Cody Campbell's support to Texas Tech recruiting

Cody Campbell‘s name is written all over the on-field success No. 4 Texas Tech has had this season. The field at Jones AT&T Stadium in Lubbock was literally named in honor of Campbell after the billionaire businessman and former Red Raiders offensive lineman donated $25 million to a stadium reconstruction effort in 2021.

With the advent of NIL, Campbell helped found Texas Tech’s NIL collective The Matador Club and has been a major financial booster to the Red Raiders’ roster-building efforts, including its On3 | Rivals’ No. 1-ranked 2025 transfer class that has helped Tech’s transformation into a Big 12 power.

This Saturday, the fourth-ranked Red Raiders (11-1, 8-1 Big 12) take on No. 11 BYU (11-1, 8-1 Big 12) in the Big 12 Championship Game inside AT&T Stadium in Arlington for a potential first-round bye in the upcoming College Football Playoffs. But before then, fourth-year Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire credited Campbell and other boosters for helping secure a Top 20 recruiting class during 2026’s Early Signing Day on Wednesday.

“We’re extremely lucky. In the background of the slide you’re showing is our stadium, and on the field it says ‘Cody Campbell Field.’ Whenever you have a guy whose dad played offensive line here, he played offensive line here, his (business) partner John Sellers played here and they played high school football together,” McGuire said Wednesday morning on Rivals’ College Football National Signing Day show on YouTube. “I walk into a building every day that’s the Womble Football Center, we have a Womble basketball center, that’s Dusty Womble, so whenever you have donors that are so active — both (Campbell and Womble) are on our Board of Regents here — then you have a great opportunity to get the financial backing that you need to compete in the world of college athletics today.

“That was a thing this year, we knew the pressure we had on us, we still have a lot of pressure on us, we embrace the pressure and appreciate it,” McGuire continued. “But we as a Texas Tech football program pushed all our chips in and went out and signed an incredible high school class and incredible transfer portal class. And now the deal is do it again. We did it today in signing a great class with some freaks, you look at (five-star EDGE LaDamion) Guyton, you look at (five-star OT) Felix (Ojo), you go on and on with this class, we got some really special players, and it is because we’ve got great financial backing.”

Guyton and Ojo are the top recruits in Texas Tech’s 20-member 2026 high school recruiting class that also includes four-star prospects WR Chase Campbell, OT Bryce Gilmore, RB Ace Rowden and CB S’Vioarean Martin.