Texas Tech superstar pitcher NiJaree Canady was the first $1 million softball player. She’s also the second.
Canady has signed another seven-figure NIL contract with the Matador Club, the Red Raiders collective, her manager Derrick Shelby of Prestige Management told ESPN.
Canady has led Texas Tech to the national championship series, which will be decided Friday night against Texas on ESPN.
Canady has consistently said she intended to stay at Texas Tech, but questions persisted as to whether she would enter the NCAA transfer portal again after another record-setting season to see what her value would be.
By signing another seven-figure contract with Tech, Canady now puts those questions to rest. Shelby said that was important so that she and her team could focus on the World Series run.
“Nija Canady is the most electrifying player in softball. She’s box office and she goes out every day and competes,” Shelby told ESPN. “The decision to stay at Tech was not difficult. This program has taken care of her. They have showed how much she is appreciated. The entire staff, her teammates, the school in general have been great. Tonight she is playing for a national championship and she is making history. Everything she wants from this game she can get here at Texas Tech.”
Canady made headlines last season when she transferred from Stanford after leading the Cardinal to two straight World Series appearances and winning the USA Softball Collegiate Player of the Year Award. Tech made a record-setting offer to pry her away, and she has more than delivered, leading the Red Raiders to the brink of a national championship.
Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes even attended the Red Raiders 4-3 win in Game 2 of the championship series on Thursday night. Mahomes played at Tech from 2014-16 and has developed a strong relationship with Canady since she’s been at Tech.
Canady was named a first team All-American for the third consecutive year this season.
Last year’s NCAA Tournament was riveting. It was thrilling. It featured a dramatic Final Four and a national championship game that wasn’t determined until the final horn.
One thing was missing from the most recent edition of March Madness, however: Cinderella.
Only one double-digit seed reached the second weekend, and nobody would ever consider John Calipari and Arkansas a version of David. The entire Sweet 16 featured power-conference schools for the first time since 1975. It was a tournament of Goliaths.
The worry is that as money for players increases in the transfer portal and name, image and likeness era, it will contribute to a growing divide between the haves and the have-nots, the big schools with money and everyone else.
“It’s definitely a little bit of a warning sign, like whoa, we might have lost what made it special,” Stanford coach Kyle Smith told The Post.
Smith was quick to note that this was just one year. It could turn out to be an anomaly. But there are reasons to believe it may become an extended trend.
The days of mid-major teams developing together over a number of years, like Cinderella Final Four teams Loyola of Chicago in 2018 and Florida Atlantic in 2023, are mostly a thing of the past.
The most outstanding player of last year’s Final Four was Florida’s Walter Clayton Jr., a former standout at Iona University. The Elite Eight also included stars who transferred from Morehead State (Johni Broome, Auburn), Florida Atlantic (Alijah Martin, Florida), Ohio (Mark Sears, Alabama), New Mexico (JT Toppin, Texas Tech), Nevada (Darrion Williams, Texas Tech), North Dakota State (Grant Nelson, Alabama) and North Florida (Chaz Lanier, Tennessee).
Top players now leave. It would be financially irresponsible not to.
Florida celebrates after defeating Houston in the national championship at the Final Four of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Monday, April 7, 2025. AP
“Where I think the current model falls short is that we have created a system where it is significantly more financially lucrative to go be the 11th or 12th man at a power-five school than to go be a mid-major star,” said Campbell coach John Andrzejek, who was an assistant on last year’s champion, Florida.
An industry source familiar with the inner workings of player salaries said that the starting point for payrolls of top 20 caliber high-major program is $10 million. That’s double what it was the previous season. Kentucky, which is ranked ninth in the Associated Press preseason poll, has a payroll of reportedly over $20 million.
Smaller schools can’t contend with that.
“It’s insane, they’re almost competing with NBA teams,” Hofstra coach Speedy Claxton said. “What are we doing here? I’m all for these kids getting some money, helping themselves out and their family out, but the numbers they’re making are outrageous. I couldn’t imagine being a millionaire on a college campus. I would lose my damn mind.”
Kentucky Wildcats forward Brandon Garrison (10) celebrates during the second half against the Georgetown Hoyas at Rupp Arena at Central Bank Center. Jordan Prather-Imagn Images
How out of whack is this system? A mid-major assistant coach said that in recruiting high school players, the kids or parents will often tell him the goal is to perform well enough at the coach’s school to advance to a higher level. Claxton will notify higher-level coaching friends about players in his league — some in his program — who could make an impact for them when they eventually transfer.
“I want to help the kids and I want to help my friends,” Claxton said.
There is no regulation. A low-major Division I assistant coach had a star freshman he was able to keep, but it was difficult. The player, his family and AAU coach were frequently contacted by people representing big schools with promises of large paydays. It started after his first big game and continued deep into the spring. The player was loyal, a rarity in the sport.
“You’re getting an education, but it’s student-professional athletes, that’s what it is now,” the assistant coach said. “It’s overseas basketball with classrooms in it.”
Lee S. Weissman
The industry source suggested one potential fix: transfer fees. If a bigger school poaches a player from a smaller school, it would cost a fixed amount, similar to professional soccer. A high-major assistant coach, speaking on condition of anonymity, doubted the power conferences would ever go for that. He suggested tweaking transfer rules, allowing one free transfer, with an exception being if a coach is fired or leaves.
“That’s the biggest thing that has to change,” the coach said. “Then the mid-major school can take a player from the bigger school and you can have him for a few years. Same thing with a mid-major star who says, ‘Hey, I’m going to wait until after my sophomore year and then I’m going to go up.’ You have to make a choice at the right time if you only get one free transfer.”
Depending on who you ask, there is a belief that the new revenue sharing model could shift this dynamic. Schools now have the option to pay their own athletes up to $20.5 million. The ones that don’t have FBS football could theoretically have an advantage, although 21 of the teams ranked in the AP preseason Top 25 come from the four conferences — the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC — that still have big-time college football. The other four teams — Connecticut, St. John’s and Creighton of the Big East, and Gonzaga — all have significant financial might.
“This year is really something to monitor and watch closely for how wide that gap is between [the big schools and everyone else],” St. John’s athletic director Ed Kull said.
The frequency of top players transferring up has opened high school recruiting at the mid-major level, according to 247 Sports national recruiting analyst Travis Branham. Seventeen players in the 2026 top 150 are committed to schools other than the Big East and the four major football conferences, and there are still several prospects who have to commit. A year ago, it was 13.
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Branham believes that the strong mid-major leagues, specifically the Atlantic 10, will soon be able to boast larger payrolls than schools from the aforementioned four big leagues because of revenue sharing.
“People are going to be shocked when they see the success coming out of the Atlantic 10,” he said. “But it’s not going to be shocking to people who understand the economics of what’s happening there.”
That, of course, remains to be seen. This coming March could tell us more.
But Claxton, the Hofstra coach, believes that major change has to occur, or the part of March that everyone loves — Cinderella — is in danger of either becoming much more rare or potentially extinct.
“The upsets occurred when us mid-majors had four-year players, people who we grew in the program, and we developed them, and you would face a younger high-major team,” he said. “That’s when the upsets happened. You’re not going to see that anymore because if we have a good freshman or sophomore, they’re not going to stay with us.”
Five of the top 10 teams in the HERO Sports Group of Five Top 25 media poll lost last week. Arguably the most surprising was Tulane, which was ranked second, losing to UTSA by 22 points.
But the No. 1 program remained the same, as Memphis is still at the top of this week’s Group of Five Top 25 media poll. Members of nationally-focused media outlets as well as at least one team beat reporter from every G5 conference is involved.
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Penn State athletic director Pat Kraft is heading into his fourth week in a national search for Penn State Football’s next head coach. Kraft has been casting a wide net in his search, showing interest in current head coaches, current coordinators, and former head coaches turned media personalities.
One of the most intriguing candidates that kept coming up in the process is former Ohio State and Florida head coach and current Fox Sports media personality, Urban Meyer.
As of last week, Kellyanne Stitts of On3 Sports reported that Meyer does not have a “desire” to return to coaching.
However, on Saturday, Kevin Borba of Athlon Sports reported that Meyer did pursue the Penn State job, before being turned down by Pat Kraft for an interesting reason.
There could be mutual interest between Urban Meyer and Penn State Football. (Mandatory Credit: Brett Davis-Imagn Images)
Despite being out of college football since 2018 and not coaching since 2021, Urban Meyer’s name has continuously been brought up each offseason because of his impressive career accomplishments.
Meyer is one of the most accomplished coaches in the history of the sport, with three national championships between two teams and the third-best winning percentage in college football history over his 17-year career. Meyer holds a 187-32 career record (.854 winning percentage) with coaching stops at Bowling Green, Utah, Florida, and Ohio State.
Urban Meyer Reportedly Spoke to Penn State About Head Coaching Vacancy
Penn State Football most recently saw Meyer during his stint at Ohio State, where he won over 90 percent of his games, including the 2014 national championship and six wins over the Nittany Lions.
As reported by Borba, on his Zach Gelb show on Audacy, Gelb reported that Meyer had “strong interest” in the Penn State job opening.
“I’m not going to crush Urban Meyer for lying when he says ‘Hey, I don’t have any interest in coaching again,’” Gelb said. “But I’ve talked to two sources and two sources told me that Urban Meyer had a great interest level in becoming the next head football coach at Penn State.”
According to Gelb, the conversations between Meyer and Penn State hit a major snag, though.
“The reasons why those talks did break down is when they got to the topic of NIL,” Gelb explained. “Which Urban Meyer has never been a head coach during the NIL era. His plan and his answers in terms of navigating those Name Image, and Likeness waters were not viewed as satisfactory enough.”
Gelb’s reporting matches the overall theme of what Pat Kraft focused on during his initial press conference regarding Penn State’s opening.
How Penn State’s Coaching Search is Taking Shape
Kraft noted in early October after James Franklin was fired that he was looking for Penn State’s next coach “to be able to maximize elite resources, attack the transfer portal, and develop at the highest level.”
Kraft is looking for a coach who can take Penn State to an elite level through the use of the new NIL and transfer portal rules.
Penn State Athletic Director Pat Kraft is leading an expansive search for the Nittany Lions’ next head coach.
With Urban Meyer’s last stint in college coaching being before the new NIL rules, this was always a question about how well Meyer could adapt to the changing landscape of college football.
From Gelb’s reporting, it seems as though Pat Kraft was not satisfied with Meyer’s ability to adapt to this new landscape.
In his On3 interview, Meyer did name a candidate to throw his weight behind in Penn State’s coaching search. Meyer told Kellyanne Stitts during his interview that Ohio State offensive coordinator Brian Hartline is ready to be a head coach.
“I’m a big Brian Hartline fan,” Meyer noted. ‘Always have been, and he just needed the experience (as an OC).”
Hartline remains one of the top candidates on Penn State’s board as the search for James Franklin’s successor continues.
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Robert Shields covers Penn State Football for Nittany Central. As a Penn State graduate, Robert has covered Penn State football since 2019, but had been a fan of the Nittany Lions for well over a decade. During his undergraduate education, Robert was a manager in the athletic department of a division III school, working in various aspects of athletic management at football, soccer, baseball, basketball, and lacrosse games.
North Dakota Fightin’ Hawks at Alabama Crimson Tide
Tuscaloosa, Alabama; Monday, 8 p.m. EST
BETMGM SPORTSBOOK LINE: Crimson Tide -33.5; over/under is 168.5
BOTTOM LINE: No. 15 Alabama hosts North Dakota in the season opener.
Alabama went 28-9 overall with a 12-3 record at home during the 2024-25 season. The Crimson Tide averaged 90.7 points per game last season, 18.1 from the free-throw line and 31.5 from beyond the arc.
North Dakota finished 6-12 in Summit League play and 2-12 on the road a season ago. The Fightin’ Hawks averaged 77.3 points per game last season, 14.6 from the free-throw line and 24.6 from 3-point range.
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The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar.
