
The Texas Tech softball team is just two wins away from the Women’s College World Series for one spectacular reason.
It has a pitcher worth $1 million.
That’s not hyperbole. Texas Tech’s booster collective actually paid NiJaree Canady a cool million to transfer from Stanford, where she was already a star, and suit up for the Red Raiders this season.
And it looks like money well spent. Canady is responsible for 58% of Texas Tech’s wins. She has posted 28 wins against just five losses and struck out 272 batters over 191 innings pitched through Tuesday.
But athletes like Canady are suddenly an endangered species. That’s because a new set of rules that would severely restrict how much boosters can pay college athletes is likely to be enacted in the coming days. The ripple effect could mean fewer softball players, golfers, sprinters and other athletes from lower-profile sports earning big paydays.
If and when Judge Claudia Wilken approves a settlement to a consolidation of three antitrust lawsuits brought by athletes against the major conferences and the NCAA, two big shifts are set to take place. First, each college athletic department will be allowed to share about $20 million of its annual revenues with athletes. But roughly 90% of that money is expected to go to the marquee sports of football and men’s basketball—leaving scraps for sports like softball.
Second, outside deals for athletes to profit from their name, image or likeness (NIL) would begin to go through a new clearinghouse overseen by Deloitte.
In that clearinghouse, deals by major companies like Nike or State Farm are likely to pass muster, said someone familiar with a committee set up by the Power 5 conferences and NCAA to implement the settlement. Deals like Canady’s, funded primarily by booster collectives, are not.
“Booster deals are going to be more difficult to pass,” the person familiar said, adding: “The system is set up to not allow third parties to pay for play.”
After Canady’s sophomore season at Stanford last year, the pitcher entered the transfer portal, where a handful of powerhouse schools lined up to woo her. But it was the last place she visited—Lubbock, Texas—that won Canady over.
The key piece of her move was an endorsement deal from the donor collective known as the Matador Club, worth just over $1 million.
Since the Sellers became billionaires by flipping oil and gas leases in West Texas’s Permian Basin, they’ve donated handsomely to their alma mater. The couple gave $11 million to Texas Tech athletics in 2022, including $1 million for softball facility upgrades.
Canady had six-figure offers from other schools, but nothing close to what the Matador Club offered. But John Sellers, who described himself as a “ready, fire, aim” kind of guy, wanted to make a statement.
But donors like the Sellers could soon become much less influential. That is down to college sports’ continued resistance to characterizing athletes as employees, a move that would require a slew of new rights and regulations.
“I think if people/donors want to invest in sports, specifically Olympic and female sports, they should be given that opportunity,” Canady said. “Oftentimes athletes in these sports don’t really have opportunities to make life-changing deals after college.”
The NIL clearinghouse won’t preclude athletes like Canady from signing endorsement deals, but it will bring considerably more oversight. The organization will want to know, for instance, how a booster club can get $1 million of value in marketing from a player with a profile like Canady, who has 34,000 followers on Instagram but is hardly a household name.
Colleges’ pot of revenue-sharing money won’t be subject to such scrutiny, meanwhile, as long as schools stay under the $20.5 million limit. So an offensive lineman, anonymous as he may be, could receive $1 million directly from his school. But a star lacrosse player would be hard-pressed to gain approval for a $1 million outside of an NIL deal bankrolled by a wealthy alum.
Some in college sports say nixing such deals risks pushing booster money back under the table—where it was for decades.
For the moment, before the settlement is approved, athletes and booster collectives are scrambling to cut deals under the old regulations. The Matador Club has already signed Canady to a one-year extension worth another $1 million, according to a person familiar with the deal.
“Until we figure out exactly what they’re going to let go on,” Tracy Sellers said, “why not keep going?”
Write to Rachel Bachman at Rachel.Bachman@wsj.com and Laine Higgins at laine.higgins@wsj.com
3