ANGOLA, Ind. – The University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire softball team began play in the 2025 NCAA Tournament on Thursday with a first-round match up against No. 25 Baldwin Wallace University. Despite grabbing the lead in the first two innings, UW-Eau Claire fell in the opening round of the tournament, 13-3 in four and a half innings. 

HOW IT HAPPENED

• The Blugolds (27-15) loaded the bases early in the first half inning after back-to-back singles from Paige Lathrop and Molly Marquardt, and Claire Beck getting hit by a pitch. A sacrifice fly by Norah Kutnick and an RBI single by Hailey Hagedorn would give UWEC a 2-0 lead after seven plate appearances. 
• Baldwin Wallace (32-4) tied the game at 2-2 in the bottom of the second after an Eau Claire throwing error and three Yellowjacket hits.  
• UW-Eau Claire regained their lead in the top of the third inning on a passed ball that allowed Molly Marquardt to score from third base. Marquardt led the Blugolds offensively during the first-round contest with two hits and two runs. 
• The Yellowjackets took over in the bottom of the third with eleven runs on nine hits to take a 13-3 lead after three innings of play. After a scoreless fourth inning and no run contributions by the Blugolds in the top of the fifth, UWEC took the opening round defeat. Jacie Schultz (12-5) was assessed the loss in her 18th start of the season. 

UP NEXT

The Blugolds will play in an elimination on Friday, May 16 against the University of Pittsburgh – Greensburg at 1:30 p.m. Eastern at SportONE/Parkview Softball Field. 

Follow the Blugolds all season long at Blugolds.com or on our app, Blugold Sports, and on social media on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. 

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HOOVER, Ala. — As Donald Trump flew to the University of Alabama on May 1 to speak at the school’s commencement activities, he spent much of the flight time pondering how to fix college athletics. 

Accompanied by Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, a former college football coach at schools like Auburn and Ole Miss, President Trump wanted to know what was plaguing college football ahead of a meeting with retired Alabama football coach Nick Saban. Trump told the senior U.S. senator that he wanted to get involved in fixing college athletics. It started with assembling a group that intricately knew the ins and outs of a remarkable period of change for the sport. 

“He said, ‘Let’s put a group of people together and give me your best shot,'” Tuberville told CBS Sports this week of his Air Force One conversation with President Trump. “And, then after that, see what we can do.”

That solution starts with Saban and Texas Tech chairman Cody Campbell, who are expected to co-lead a presidential commission on college athletics. The pairing of a seven-time national championship-winning football coach with a billionaire former college football player naturally generated major headlines. 

Nick Saban expected to serve as co-chair for Trump administration’s commission on college football

Will Backus

In his first public comments about the commission on Wednesday, Saban didn’t want to go into any primary specifics about the commission’s intentions when discussing with a small group of reporters at the Regions Tradition Pro-Am. 

“To be honest with you, I don’t really know much about this commission,” Saban said Wednesday morning. “I don’t really know what the commission will do. I think we know what needs to be done; I just think we need to figure out who’s got the will to do it. I learned one thing about coaching all these years when you get a subject like this that’s very complex: It’s probably good not to talk about it off the cuff.”

Later that day, on the “Paul Finebaum Show,” Saban said he wasn’t sure there was a need for a commission at all. 

Saban’s cagey response could be because the commission hasn’t been formalized yet and is still working through early essential details, according to those familiar with the process. But despite Saban publicly questioning its utility, he has been involved behind the scenes and recognizes the value Trump could bring in delivering a federal solution. 

“I know that Nick and Cody are talking on the phone a lot,” Tuberville told CBS Sports, and that active work was being done on building the commission’s roster around them. He referenced American Football Coaches Association executive director Craig Bohl, who retired from Wyoming in 2023, as a name that would make sense to join Saban and Campbell. 

“The only thing that I can say is that the AFCA, we’ve had significant conversations with, what I believe are the stakeholders in college football and our perspective and my perspective is that we listen to all the coaches and we certainly have some insight that I think is unique,” Bohl told CBS Sports. “But as far as the formulation of the commission, I’m not aware that anything has been set in stone. I’ve had dialogue, but there’s not been anybody from that commission to say, ‘Hey Craig, we want you on here.’ I’ve had a dialogue. I just don’t know where it’s all at.”

The White House has not responded to a request for comment regarding the commission. When asked to specify whether the dialogue was with the White House, Saban or Campbell, Bohl, a coach for over 40 years most notably at Wyoming and North Dakota State, did not provide specifics. But he was on Capitol Hill last month when he addressed members of the House Judiciary Committee at an NIL roundtable in April offering three key recommendations on agent regulation, standardization of contracts and urging congress to create a governing body to oversee NIL issues with coaches serving a formal role on such a body. 

“I know [President Trump] is a big college football fan,” Bohl said. “I do know he cares, and I do know that Coach Saban cares. I think it’s imperative that each lane, whether it’s a commissioner, whether it’s college presidents, whether it’s coaches or student athletes or some members of Congress, that everybody has an opportunity to engage and clarify and offer their perspective on a pathway forward.”  

According to Tuberville, the key is not overstuffing the group with too many names so that it becomes unwieldy and doesn’t accomplish anything; far too many NCAA working groups have experienced this over the years. He says that even though he’s not the one putting the roster together and is only helping informally, his phone has been ringing off the hook with people interested in joining the commission. 

“I think you get people involved who are looking at it every day,” Tuberville said. “Not just some weekend person. We’re going to need player involvement, men and women. One thing that President Trump says on my watch is: ‘We’re not losing women’s sports, we’re not losing Title IX.'” 

Georgia coach Kirby Smart said Wednesday he wasn’t sure whether Saban would be on the commission, but if he was, he could improve the current unregulated environment. 

“He’s certainly the right candidate because he knows the landscape,” Smart said. “He’s very bright, and he’ll do the due diligence to be prepared for it.”

What does the group want to accomplish?

The proposed commission’s goals have not been revealed, in part because the group has not even been officially announced, but multiple interviews with involved parties offer clues as to its focus. 

As CBS Sports detailed last week, Saban and Campbell have publicly shared their views on several topics, ranging from NIL to the transfer portal to Olympic sports. While Saban has constantly reiterated players deserve to be paid, he testified at a Senate hearing last year it wasn’t in the “spirit of college athletics” for “whoever wants to pay the most money, raise the most money, buy the most players is going to have the best opportunity to win.”

Can Nick Saban and a Texas billionaire fix college sports? What we know about their vision

Brandon Marcello

Tuberville shared a similar sentiment in a CBS Sports interview.

“You’re going to eliminate 90 percent of schools because they don’t have the money,” Tuberville said. “Look at Texas. Nobody’s ever going to beat them again if we allow them to keep going the way they’re going. Again, I’ve got nothing against Texas; they’re going by the rules, but we’ve got to hopefully make it work out.” 

Campbell, a significant benefactor for Texas Tech football’s NIL efforts, has written in The Federalist that college sports needs antitrust protection and one set of rules rather than the current patchwork of different rules for different states that currently rules. Saban made a similar point on “The Paul Finebaum Show,” arguing the need for a law that encompasses all 50 states and eliminates advantages and disadvantages of each state coming up with its own NIL rules. This is something that college athletics leaders have been lobbying for on Capitol Hill for years and as likely a bet as anything to come out of the commission’s recommendations. 

Said Tuberville: “The one thing we have to do — and I told the president this — the one thing we can do is we can get all 50 states doing the same thing.” 

Another focus will be preserving Olympic sports in the face of revenue sharing (assuming the House settlement is approved), which will predominantly devote resources away from them. College administrators have publicly and privately wondered the impact of the $20.5 million revenue share number on Olympic sports, ranging from slashing resources to fears of having to cut sports altogether. Those sports are not revenue generators for athletic departments in a time where revenue has never been more critical, but they play an important role in developing athletes who could later represent their countries in the Olympics. This is a priority for both Trump and Tuberville, particularly ahead of the United States hosting the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. 

There is a laundry list of other things that either could or will be explored from fixing what is currently year-round free agency in college sports to whether there needs to be collective bargaining with athletes to the impact of conference realignment. There is no shortage of issues that coaches, administrators and players believe warrants fixing. 

Hall of Fame basketball player Charles Barkley knows all about that. The NBA analyst and Auburn alum believes Saban, a man he thinks the world of, has quite an arduous task ahead of him. 

“I mean college athletics is so f–ked up right now,” Barkley said. “I don’t know what they’re gonna do to fix this thing. NCAA is just a bunch of idiots who let it get out of control. I don’t know how you put the toothpaste back in the tube.”

What’s the timeline?

The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Trump was weighing an executive order in an attempt to fix college athletics. He could even use an executive order to officially form the commission, as he recently did with a group focused on religious liberty. 

There is no exact timetable on when the commission could come to conclusions. There is a strong desire to find solutions, but they still could be months away. The commission won’t have the power to change laws but can recommend them to Trump and/or Congress. 

Trump wants to be involved in fixing college sports, but with everything else going on in the world, Tuberville said the group wouldn’t bring anything to the president until it had an actionable plan. 

“There’s a huge range of problems that we got here that that run off in different directions,” Tuberville said. “I told him, ‘Mr. President, you understand just enough to get us all in trouble.’ Let’s do something and present it and try to explain it just like anything else when it comes to a tax bill or something to do with education or something to do with foreign relations. He’s got to have people around him saying we think this is the best thing, and then he’ll evaluate it and go with it or not go with it.”

There has been natural skepticism within college athletics about what a commission can accomplish, further enflamed by Saban’s comments Wednesday, but Tuberville believes it could be college sports’ best hope. He spent years trying to work on a bill alongside Sen. Joe Manchin (West Virginia). Others, like Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas), Cory Booker (New Jersey), Richard Blumenthal (Connecticut) and Jerry Moran (Kansas), have also spent years in trying to come up with a federal legislative solution to fix college sports’ ails. College sports leaders have spent considerable time and energy working with those senators and congresspeople to explain the issues and come up with solutions, but one Power Four AD recently told CBS Sports that they and their colleagues always leave Washington, D.C. dismayed at the prospects of a federal solution coming out of Congress.

Instead, it may be college football’s greatest coach and a Texas oil billionaire who help deliver a long-awaited rescue. 

“I think Nick and Cody can get something done along with President Trump’s power,” Tuberville said. “You’re not going to get six votes in the Senate so (Trump is) going to have to say, ‘Look this is what we’re going to do.'”

By SUSAN JONES

If you’ve been paying attention to the business of college athletics, you probably know that big changes have been happening — and more are on the way.

“The impacts are going to be real, that’s for sure, and in many ways, it’ll be unrecognizable, even though a lot of people just have their eyes closed or their blinders on,” said Mike Epitropoulos, a Pitt sociology professor and chair of the University Senate’s Athletics & Recreation committee.

For those who haven’t paid attention, the key phrases are “House settlement” and “Name, Image and Likeness (NIL).”

The money involved in the proposed House settlement could have lasting impacts not just on college sports, but also on colleges themselves.

Pitt recently said in a statement: “The University of Pittsburgh is extremely proud of its rich and robust tradition of athletic excellence, and we are committed to building upon that legacy by implementing the provisions of House vs. NCAA settlement, should it be approved by Judge Wilken. We believe the proposed settlement provides clarity and a path forward as the University and its student-athletes take the next steps forward together in this new era of college athletics.”

What is the House settlement?

The first thing to know is the House vs. NCAA case is not settled, yet. U.S. Judge Claudia Wilken was initially scheduled to rule on the final settlement in early April, but she had several questions, particularly about roster limits (more about that later).

The case stems from a 2020 lawsuit by Arizona State swimmer Grant House and women’s college basketball player Sedona Prince, along with two separate suits by other college athletes, which were combined into one case. The suits argued that the NCAA and the top-tier conferences — including the ACC, which Pitt belongs to; Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC — violated antitrust law by collectively agreeing to not provide benefits and compensation to student-athletes, and denying student-athletes the opportunity to profit from use of their name, image and likeness.

Over the past several years, many states — including Pennsylvania since 2021 — have allowed third parties to pay student-athletes in NIL deals, but universities were still prohibited from paying students directly.

After many years of discussions, a preliminary settlement was reached last October. The key details of the plan include:

Back pay: The settlement includes $2.78 billion in back pay for athletes who competed between 2016-24 and were either fully or partially shut out from NIL payments. The money will be paid over 10 years — 60% by the NCAA from its reserves and 40% from the schools. Most of the schools’ part of the settlement will come from revenue they would have received from the NCAA for events like the March Madness basketball tournament.

Still in question is how the back pay will be divided among all Division I athletes. Some estimates say that up to 95% will go to football and men’s and women’s basketball players. A specific distribution plan, designed by the plaintiffs, will determine individual back pay amounts.

Revenue sharing: Under the 10-year deal, schools will be able to pay students directly for NIL rights, up to a cap of 22% of their annual revenue from things like media rights, ticket sales and sponsorships, which currently average about $23 million per school.

NIL deals: Student-athletes can still negotiate external NIL deals under the settlement, but would have to report any third-party NIL compensation greater than $600. And there would be increased scrutiny on these deals.

Roster limits vs. scholarships

The big stumbling block now delaying Judge Wilken’s final approval of the settlement is the provision that does away with athletics scholarship limits and instead institutes roster limits for each sport.

For instance, the initial proposal would limit football to 105 players, instead of the 85 scholarship players now permitted. In 2023, Pitt had 110 players on its football team, with 25 not on scholarship. This limit would essentially eliminate “walk-on” players.

Some schools have already made some roster cuts in anticipation of the House ruling being implemented in July, although Pitt has not. Pitt football coach Pat Narduzzi told the Post-Gazette that his understanding is the 105 number doesn’t need to be met until classes officially start, so he has some time to decide.

Ohio State Athletic Director Ross Bjork told the school’s Board of Trustees last year, according to the Columbus Dispatch, that roster limits could mean a reduction of about 150 student-athletes out of a total of 1,100 a year, and that some sports would become more like club sports. Shortly after his comments, Ohio State eliminated scholarships for the men’s gymnastics program.

Attorneys submitted a compromise proposal last week that would allow, but not require, colleges to grandfather in players who would have been or who already had been cut because of the roster limits and let them play for as long as their NCAA eligibility lasts.

During that time, those players would not count against the roster limits. That includes athletes who were “certified for practice or competition” during this current academic year season, prior to April 7; or any new recruit who was assured a spot on the team roster for 2025-26.

Those who objected to the original roster limits had until May 13 to reply. Lawyers representing athletes who lost their roster spots called the proposed solution insufficient.

Where will the money come from?

Pitt Athletics reported $69.1 million in revenue for fiscal year 2023-24, according to the most recent Stairs Report required by the state, and expenses of $108.5 million — leaving a nearly $40 million deficit. If Pitt had paid student-athletes up to the 22% cap that year, it would have added another $15 million to the deficit.

And even more profitable programs are questioning how they will come up with the money. The Associated Press quoted Alabama Athletic Director Greg Byrne, who told Congress “Those are resources and revenues that don’t exist.”

Sheila Vélez Martinez, the University’s faculty athletics representative and professor of asylum refugee and immigration law in the School of Law, said an analysis by the Knight Commission shows that around 2% of the budget for Power Four conferences’ athletic departments — which include the ACC — comes from institutional funds. The rest is mostly media rights and donations, business deals with sponsors, sponsorships and ticket sales.

One Pitt alumnus, attorney J. Byron Fleck, has tried to get the Board of Trustees to vote on a resolution that would prohibit any part of student tuition and fees or appropriations from the state from being used to pay players under the revenue-sharing proposal in the House settlement.

So far, he hasn’t had any luck in getting the trustees to take up the matter.

More issues in the future

If all the issues involved in the House settlement weren’t enough, other potential problems may lie ahead.

“What we see today, it’s not what we’re going to have by the end of the decade,” said Sheila Vélez Martinez, the University’s faculty athletics representative and professor of asylum refugee and immigration law in the School of Law. “There’s too much at stake for too many people.”

No matter what Judge Wilken eventually rules, there’s likely to be more lawsuits regarding issues about how the back pay money is divided or over students losing roster spots or teams being cut.

Congress also might pass legislation that allows student-athletes to collectively bargain, but then not be considered employees, Vélez Martinez said, which will add an extra level of complexity for athletic departments. There also might be a move for the power conferences to break away from the NCAA.

“Athletics directors right now are kind of CEOs in that they’re just going to try to generate business so they can support the needs of the department,” she said, “because that money is not coming from the institutions.”

The impact from the House settlement is likely to ripple through universities, Epitropoulos said. “I’ve seen concern about … faculty unions striking because ‘You won’t give us $1,000 raise, but all of a sudden the budget for sports is going to go up.’”

But Epitropoulos said polls show that athletics are still important in recruiting not only athletes, but other students and faculty. “Even faculty who might hate sports, many of them say, ‘Yeah, I like being around a university with a vibe that has all the swag around and the big game coming in this weekend, and all the alumni coming in.”

Student-athletes are “ambassadors for all that we do,” Vélez Martinez said. “They’re not only ambassadors for athletics, but they’re ambassadors for Pitt, and that is important. So I want to be able to preserve that.”

Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.

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LUBBOCK, Texas — Last July, pitcher NiJaree Canady shook college sports when she announced her transfer to Texas Tech and landed the richest softball NIL deal ever.

The reigning USA Softball National Player of the Year bolted from the hallowed halls of Stanford, where she had become a superstar after piloting the Cardinal to two straight Women’s College World Series appearances, finishing in the final four teams both times. Her new home would be on the arid plains of West Texas at a school that had never won a conference title and had won just 49% of its games — and 31% of its league games since the advent of the Big 12.

The transfer was met with awe: The Matador Club, Texas Tech’s NIL collective, made a historic play for Canady, offering a one-year, $1,050,024 contract (a million for Canady, $50k for living expenses, $24 for her jersey number).

Just more than a month after Red Raiders coach Gerry Glasco — who was hired from Louisiana on June 20, three days after Canady had entered the portal and started lining up visits — arrived in Lubbock, he landed the most valuable player in the country. He did it by pulling out all the stops, including recruiting calls from quarterback Patrick Mahomes to Canady, a Kansan who is a devoted Kansas City Chiefs fan.

Glasco, who didn’t have much in the way of NIL in Lafayette, had suddenly walked into what he believed was the best softball situation in America. Two of the Matador Club’s biggest boosters — Tracy Sellers, a former Tech softball player, and her husband, John, an oil and gas executive and former Red Raiders football player under Mike Leach — had been supporting softball for years. They donated $11 million to the athletic department in 2022, with $1 million designated for softball stadium upgrades.

Glasco said he was told Canady’s agent was initially seeking $400,000, which he thought was low for her to leave Stanford, where she was already a budding legend.

“My message was: We’re talking about Bo Jackson. We’re talking about Herschel Walker,” Glasco told the Sellers. “We’re talking about a once-in-a-generation player that’s already made a name all over America. She’s a folk hero in our sport and she’s a sophomore.”

Tracy thought it was worth making a statement at Texas Tech, a place where Sheryl Swoopes became a superstar and where the highway outside Rocky Johnson Field is named for former Red Raiders women’s basketball coach Marsha Sharp. After meeting with the star pitcher, Sellers decided if anyone was worthy of such an emphatic statement about investing in women’s sports, it was Canady.

“She is a wonderful human being,” Sellers said. “We look at it as they deserve it just as much [as male athletes]. She worked so hard to be the No. 1 pitcher in the country. … I left that meeting and thought, this is who I would love to put a lot of effort into because of who she is.”

Canady knew the spotlight would come with the news, but she hopes it opens the door for those who follow her to reap the benefits.

“There are a lot of male athletes who get that and it’s not a headline anymore,” Canady said. “I hope that happens for women’s sports, too. I feel like it can be a pressure if you let it be, but honestly, I think it’s just a privilege. I hope someone tomorrow comes in and builds it even more.”

Looking back at the Sellers’ donation for the softball facilities, the same size investment in Canady had a greater transformative impact.

This year, the Red Raiders won their first Big 12 regular-season and conference titles while Canady led the nation with a 0.81 ERA. She went 26-5, racking up the second-most wins in a season in school history. She was named the Big 12 Pitcher of the Year. On Friday at 5:30 p.m. ET, No. 12 seed Texas Tech (45-12), hosting its first Lubbock Regional, will play Brown (33-15).

“She definitely put Texas Tech softball on the map,” Tracy said.

CANADY WANTS TO make one thing clear: There’s more to the story than just a giant deposit.

“I feel like people thought I heard the number and just came to Texas Tech, which wasn’t the case at all,” she said she considered Tech’s offer for more than a month before she committed. “If I didn’t feel like Coach Glasco was an amazing coach and could lead this program to be where we thought it could be, I wouldn’t have come.”

Glasco, 66, is a wildly successful late bloomer in the softball world who won five conference titles with six trips to the NCAA regionals in six seasons at Louisiana. He wasn’t hired until Canady had already entered the portal, so he had to make up ground quickly, because he wasn’t exactly in the sweepstakes in Lafayette. But he had a secret weapon: Glasco was friends with Jim Huecker, a former travel ball coach and Canady’s longtime coach. And he knew what Huecker knew: Canady missed hitting as much as she loved pitching.

Canady grew up in Topeka, Kansas, as a multisport star, including playing basketball and tackle football against boys. On her girls’ basketball team in high school, Canady averaged 20.6 points and 12.3 rebounds during her junior year, leading Topeka High to the Kansas 6A state finals while also being the two-time Kansas Softball Gatorade Player of the Year and leading the team to its first two state titles. She dominated in the circle, obviously, but also hit .478 with 13 homers as a junior and .530 with 42 RBIs as a senior. After hitting just 35 times in two seasons at Stanford, Canady wanted to get back to being an all-around athlete.

And Glasco, who directed record-setting offenses as an assistant at Georgia and Texas A&M, surprised Canady by making hitting a centerpiece of his presentation, which comprised a stack of handwritten stat sheets and charts.

“That’s my lineup,” Glasco said, holding up the same poster he used to pitch Canady. “If you look, I’ve got ’em all and I’m promising her how many runs I’m going to score. The coaches wanted to put it in Excel, make it nice, but I said, ‘No, no, no. I want it because NiJa has to trust me. If it’s in my handwriting, this is better than on a computer because it has to be personal.’ I believe that was important.”

On most visits, Canady spent the bulk of her time with pitching coaches. But in Lubbock, Canady was so interested that she spent more time on her visit meeting with Glasco than she did with Tara Archibald, Glasco’s daughter who serves as associate head coach and pitching coach.

“I think I talked to Coach Tara maybe 20-30 minutes about pitching and then the rest of the time was just Coach Glasco talking about hitting,” Canady said. “Afterward, I had to go back and talk to Coach Tara a little more just because Coach Glasco and I spent so much time just talking about hitting, going through different swings, watching videos. And that was definitely different just because other schools were obviously more focused on my pitching.”

When Archibald left her head coaching job at Eastern Illinois, where she went 40-17 last season, to join her father’s staff July 3, she couldn’t have imagined landing Canady. But first, she had to wait on her dad, who can spin a few yarns.

Glasco coached his three daughters: Tara, Erin and the late Geri Ann, a former Gatorade National Player of the Year who died in a 2019 car accident when she was a volunteer coach for him at Louisiana.

“This is why I think I could identify with her,” Glasco said. “All three of my daughters pitched and played and hit. And when you’re an athlete, the one thing you don’t want to be is a pitcher only. In our sport, the pitcher is so important, so we limit them. And I think that’s what she felt like in her college career. … She wants the opportunity.”

Despite dealing with a soft-tissue injury in March and being limited, Canady has 81 at-bats this year, batting .309 with five doubles and eight homers. She leads the team with a .457 on-base percentage, thanks to her 13 walks and being hit by a pitch 10 times. Still, she takes violent cuts, looking to send the ball into orbit any chance she gets.

“I’m definitely trying to hit the ball out,” Canady said. “And that’s Coach Glasco’s motto, too. He loves the long ball.”

CANADY SAID THERE wasn’t much culture shock going from Palo Alto to Lubbock. She is from Topeka, after all.

“Lubbock reminds me more of home,” she said.

The major difference, she said, has been the atmosphere in Lubbock. Located five hours from Dallas and six from Austin, it’s its own outpost in West Texas. The Red Raiders are a devoted bunch.

“I think that was the biggest shock to me, just about how much sports matter here in Texas,” she said. “I remember my first football game here and just seeing how many people were here, that was definitely different.”

That legendary arm has proved useful at Tech football games, where she has admitted to sneaking in tortillas and winging them down toward the field, a tradition in Lubbock.

“There’s a whole science behind getting it far,” she said. “You have to put a hole in the center. There’s a certain way to throw it.”

And it didn’t hurt that another Red Raider with a legendary arm has become a big fan and made his own recruiting pitch. Canady, a huge Chiefs fan, was shocked when Mahomes interrupted his vacation in Italy to call her on her visit.

“I’m not going to say any names, but another program had a very important person call me and there was no caller ID, so I couldn’t call him back or anything,” Canady said. “But Patrick Mahomes, I have his number, I can reach out to him. So I think that’s cool. Last July, we were eating lunch and had a beautiful view of the whole football stadium. Someone told me, just send a picture to Patrick to see if he responds. He’s preparing for the season and then I think within 10 minutes he got back to me.”

Canady has that kind of star power, and she’ll undoubtedly draw more players who want to play alongside her next year, with more time for Glasco to work instead of the quick-assembly project he put together last season. Glasco thinks this year’s Red Raiders team can take anyone to the wire because of Canady, but is confident he can contend for a national championship next year, if not this year.

“I’ve never coached anybody close to her,” he said. “I’ve never coached this kind of pitcher in college. It has a huge effect. It makes up for a lot of bad coaching mistakes, I’ll tell you that.”

The partnership impacted all parties involved. She says it was hard to leave Stanford, her teammates and coaches behind, and yes, that Stanford degree. But Canady’s dream is to coach kids and open her own facility — or facilities — and her family feels the money will help her get there quickly.

“She wants to teach little girls to hit,” Glasco said. “She loves little kids. You can see it when she signs autographs.”

And it doesn’t hurt to have the Sellers in her corner.

“Why would you not want people you love to succeed? And so same with NiJa. I would go into business any day with her,” Tracy said. “She’s a celebrity in Lubbock, Texas. It’s not just about money. I really hope that story gets out about her.”

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