• Glasco argued that the focus on Canady’s compensation overshadows her athletic achievements and perpetuates gender inequality in sports.
• He emphasized the significant value Canady brought to the team, exceeding the financial investment of her NIL deal.
• Glasco advocated for clearer rules and guidelines surrounding NIL deals in the future.

OKLAHOMA CITY — Even after the Texas Tech softball team’s season came to a bitter end in the finals of the Women’s College World Series, Gerry Glasco had to be asked about NiJaree Canady’s name, image and likeness deal.

OKLAHOMA CITY — After pitching only one inning in the biggest game in Texas Tech softball history, pitcher NiJaree Canady watched the remainder of the game from the dugout. Canady, who started every game of the Women’s College World Series for the Red Raiders finally hit her wall. 

“I think the amount of innings got to her,” Texas Tech coach Gerry Glasco told the media postgame. The former Louisiana Tech head coach put his ace in the circle for 240 of the Red Raiders’ 410 innings pitched. 

Any why wouldn’t he?

Canady completed her junior campaign with a 1.11 earned run average and over 300 strikeouts. The Red Raiders right-hander more than earned her second $1 million NIL contract before the opening pitch of the winner-take-all Game 3 at Devon Park here Friday night.

Her headline-grabbing NIL deals and dominance on the diamond made her the most talked about softball player in recent memory. Unfortunately for Texas Tech, the highest-paid pitcher in NCAA softball is indeed still human. After six complete games and 34 innings pitched in nine days, Canady’s velocity and pitch placement noticeably declined against Texas. 

Those are the hard facts in dissecting the Texas’ 10-4 victory that gave the Longhorns the school’s first softball championship. However, some see the 2025 Women’s College World Series battle as offering something more lasting for both programs and the sport at large. 

“Honestly, it just gets bigger and bigger, and I feel like more eyes are on the sport,” Canady said Friday night. “Of course, that comes with, like, positives and negatives. There’s always, like, negative attention that comes with it. But I feel … [we’re] just growing the sport, and just giving younger girls something look up to, it means a lot.”

The first two games of the championship series each reached a record 2.1 million viewers. The cumulative attendance at Devon Park reached 119,778, a tournament record. Friday’s game saw a record crowd of 12,269. 

Record NIL money. Record attendance. Record viewership. It can leave one feeling like Texas Tech’s Canady is on the path to becoming the Caitlin Clark of NCAA softball. 

“If Caitlin Clark would have entered the transfer portal after her sophomore year, where would the bidding war have ended up, knowing what you know now?” OpenDorse CEO Blake Lawrence told The Athletic last July. “The bet here is that the rise of women’s sports, the rise of softball viewership, and a once-in-a-generation talent like Caitlin Clark is on the market. The $1 million payment could be justified.”

The quote aged well. A year later and Texas Tech competed in their first NCAA championship series. The trophy may have evaded the Red Raiders in their debut, but Canady and her teammates expressed no regrets. 

“Yes, this year wasn’t how we wanted it to go. It’s not how we wanted it to end,” Canady said, “but to be able to go, to have a team that didn’t even make it to a regional the year before, come to the final, to push a third game in a national championship series, I feel like that means a lot.”

However, as the junior alluded to, with more money often comes more problems — or, perhaps more awareness of existing problems. 

Although Glasco has said multiple times Canady’s skill and her impact on the program is worth at least $1 million, he doesn’t shy away from the hard truth about gender inequity in how NIL deals are discussed. 

“I think it’s interesting. You watch an Ohio State in the men’s football game, national championship game, you don’t hear any announcers talking about NIL,” the coach said. “I found it almost insulting to her at times when I listen to broadcast, how much they talk about it, because … I don’t hear it when we talk about, when we watch a men’s basketball game or a men’s football game, and, to me, that that’s not right.” 

However, will these inequities, or the ability of a softball program to offer a $1 million dollar NIL deal, soon be a thing of the past? As Texas and Texas Tech prepared for Game 3 of the 2025 WCWS, a federal judge made her final ruling on the House vs. NCAA lawsuit.

House v. NCAA settlement approved: Landmark decision opens door for revenue sharing in college athletics

Brandon Marcello

As part of the $2.8 billion settlement, beginning July 1, schools will have $20.5 million in payments to divvy out across their men’s and women’s athletic programs. 

Should the suggested back-payment formula be used, 90% of the fund will be allocated to football and men’s basketball. Women’s basketball would receive 5% of the pool and all other sports, including softball, would spilt the remaining 5%. 

Between the Wild West-era of NIL and the increasing transfer portal traffic, college rosters are constantly changing. As more money comes into sports like softball, coaches must strike a balance between cultivating young athletes and leaders with recruiting superstars who can accelerate the championship window. 

What is that balance?

“That’s the great unknown right now,” Texas coach Mike White told CBS Sports Friday night. “Like the athletic director [Chris] Del Conte said, it’s, like, coming up, sailing out in a flat world and coming off the edge … In some respects, it’s great that these athletes are able to kind of earn a living now, or get paid for what they do, and that’s awesome. But it’s also hard to compete.” 

Even while competing in his eighth WCWS championship, White and his staff had eyes on the transfer portal, because that’s what is required to compete in 2025. Austin may have the title, but there’s no denying that there’s also a good deal of momentum some 375 miles away in Lubbock.

All signs point to the rising senior returning to Texas Tech. The question now is whether Canady and Glasco can build on The NiJa Effect?

Starting this fall, NCAA Division I schools will be able to pay players directly up to a salary cap of $20.5 million.

Jae C. Hong/AP

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Jae C. Hong/AP

A federal judge has approved the multibillion-dollar class-action legal settlement known as House v. NCAA, paving the way for a new era for college sports.

Starting this fall, colleges and universities in the NCAA’s top division will be allowed to directly pay athletes for the first time. Payments will be limited by a salary cap set initially at $20.5 million per school. And more than $2 billion will be paid out to former college athletes who were not allowed to earn money while they were in school.

“Despite some compromises, the settlement agreement nevertheless will result in extraordinary relief for members of the settlement classes,” U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken wrote in Friday’s order.

The approval of the settlement “marks a huge step forward for college sports,” said NCAA President Charlie Baker. Direct payments to players, he added, “is a tremendously positive change and one that was long overdue.”

Origins of the settlement

For decades, college athletics were ruled by the tradition of amateurism, and NCAA rules banned schools from compensating players — called “student-athletes” by the NCAA — with anything beyond a scholarship that covered the costs of tuition and attending college.

But the money in big-time college sports has grown exponentially over the past few decades. Top-level athletic departments rake in hundreds of millions of dollars from broadcast deals, ticket sales, donations and licensing agreements.

“The money became too big to not allow athletes to get a cut,” said Noah Henderson, a one-time collegiate golfer who now directs the sports management program at Loyola University Chicago.

The House settlement arose out of three different lawsuits over the issue of compensation for collegiate athletes. The plaintiffs were a class of some 390,000 current and former college athletes, and the defendants were the NCAA and five of its athletic conferences. The negotiations took more than a year to complete.

How the settlement works

There are two major parts of the House settlement: one that looks backward, and one that looks forward.

Looking backward, the NCAA and schools have agreed to pay $2.75 billion to former college athletes who played before 2021. That’s the year the NCAA changed its rules to allow players to sign licensing agreements to earn money from their name, image and likeness rights, known as NIL. Men’s football and basketball players will earn the largest payments, with prominent athletes who played at major schools earning as much as five or six figures.

Going forward, the settlement puts in place a new system that will allow schools to pay players directly. Schools will be able to decide which players to pay and how much to pay them. It is expected that most of the compensation will be reserved for players in the sports that generate the most revenue for schools: primarily football, along with men’s and women’s basketball.

The settlement also sets a salary cap. For each school, player compensation across all sports will count against a cap initially set at $20.5 million and that could rise as high as $33 million in 2035. Also new are roster limits, which replace the traditional scholarship limits for each sport. Schools may grant as many scholarships as they like, but team sizes are limited.

Around half of the NCAA’s 365 Division I schools are expected to adopt the new framework, either because their conferences — the SEC, ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and PAC-12 — are named as defendants and they are required to comply with the settlement or because they are expected to opt in to its terms, according to court documents filed by lawyers negotiating the settlement. Some schools, particularly those in the lower football subdivision and those without football teams altogether, will opt out of the settlement and continue to compensate athletes only with scholarships and other costs of attendance.

Name, image and likeness

Since 2021, when the NCAA first allowed players to earn compensation from their name, image and likeness rights, NIL payments have become a de facto pay-to-play system. Star players, like Duke’s basketball phenom Cooper Flagg, have earned millions of dollars on these deals.

Another key part of the settlement takes aim at those supersized NIL deals by establishing a third-party clearinghouse to review licensing agreements for “fair market value.”

That concept has been criticized by some in college sports. It is also likely to face legal challenges, said Sam Ehrlich, a professor at Boise State University who tracks college sports litigation.

“There’s going to be significant questions moving forward as to what kind of powers that clearinghouse has and whether the clearinghouse is even legal,” Ehrlich told NPR last month.

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NCAA member schools can compensate their players across all sports beginning July 1, according to the approval issued by U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken.

• College athletes can now be compensated for their name, image, and likeness.
• The settlement covers athletes whose careers began between 2016 and Sept. 15, 2024.

A federal judge has granted final approval of a settlement of three antitrust cases addressing the compensation of college athletes Friday, ending a protracted legal debate and ushering in an extraordinary era that will allow NCAA member schools to directly pay their athletes.