Texas Tech could play a Friday home game in 2026. Prominent booster Cody Campbell isn’t happy about the possibility. And Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark is telling him to deal with it.
Campbell, the Texas Tech Board of Regents chairman and funder of the “save college sports” commercials you might have seen during the 2025 football season, said on social media this week that he believed the Red Raiders’ Big 12 home opener against Houston would be played on Friday night. That game is currently scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 19 and could get moved up a day.
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In his post, Campbell directly tagged Yormark.
Yormark isn’t sympathetic to Campbell’s complaints, however. In a statement to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, he cited the Big 12’s TV agreement with Fox after first reminding Campbell who was in charge of the conference. He also didn’t dispute that Tech could be playing a home game on a Friday night in 2026.
“Cody Campbell does not run the Big 12,” Yormark’s statement said. “Our board and our ADs approved playing 12 games a year off of Saturdays in an effort to raise the profile, narrative and viewership of Big 12 football. Texas Tech hosting a primetime game on Friday night delivers that.”
“Friday night Big 12 football games outperformed the conference’s average rating by 64% in 2025. All of our schools are treated equally during the TV scheduling process and this game fits within our scheduling parameters. I am thankful that our TV partners provide us with these opportunities.”
You can understand why the Big 12 would want to put Texas Tech on a Friday night in 2026. The Red Raiders won the conference a season ago thanks to a transfer-heavy roster funded by NIL payments from Campbell and other donors. Tech got a bye to the College Football Playoff quarterfinals before losing to Oregon in the Orange Bowl.
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Tech should be a favorite to win the conference again. And it didn’t play in a Friday night game at all in 2025.
The Red Raiders were one of the few Big 12 teams who didn’t play a Friday game a season ago. Twelve teams played on Friday, while Cincinnati played on a Thursday to open the season and TCU played on a Monday. Iowa State — which opened the season in Week Zero in Dublin — was the only other team to only play on Saturdays.
The odds of Tech avoiding Fridays for a second season in a row are extremely slim. And, as Yormark said, the Big 12’s schools agreed to the Friday night idea anyway. As part of its current TV deals with the Big 12 and Big Ten, Fox got into the Friday night college football business.
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If Big 12 teams didn’t want to play on Friday nights — and, most importantly, decline the TV money that comes with those games — they could have simply said no.
