The headline on CBS Sports website told a depressing story, one that poisons our love of collegiate athletics — “Women’s College World Series 2025: Texas Tech’s historic NIL investment leads to program’s first appearance.” The subhead is even worse. “NiJaree Canady became the first softball player to net a $1 million NIL deal; now, she’s leading the Red Raiders to history.”

Like most of you I hate the “Wild West” we have been relegated to until the adults in the room – athletic directors, commissioners, lawyers, judges and politicians – can agree to set fence lines with the student-athletes. And the longer it takes to get ‘em strung, the more fans collegiate athletics will lose.

These kinds of stories, while true, make me angry because they are dominating the narrative of collegiate athletics. But can two things be true at the same time?

I’ve devoted the better part of my life to college athletics and frankly, the same way you’ve considered giving up your season tickets, I’ve considered pulling the plug on this old keyboard. But that was before I walked into the Friday post-game press conference, where the losing team was understandably emotional after the loss.

But it was as if someone attached me to the business end of a defibrillator as my heart started to beat for college athletics again.

On the same day we saw how money ball can change the destiny of a program with the hiring of a coach and a generational arm talent, FSU catcher Micheala Edenfield and head coach Lonni Alameda’s five-minute post-game conversation reminded us of what we have loved about college athletics, and what makes it so fundamentally different from professional sports.

The patient may be on life support, but as you listened to the interaction between Edenfield, herself an NIL recipient, and Alameda, who is battling cancer, you feel hearts beating, theirs and yours.

“While I was catching, I was looking around, trying to soak in all my surroundings at the Plex, trying to recognize the changes that happened during my time here, the new scoreboard, the speaker system, the plaque with all the All-American pieces behind home plate, taking a look at my family and really soaking that part in,” Edenfield said. “I really couldn’t have asked for anything more than for the team to be present on defense at that point.”

Down 2-0 in the top of the final inning, with a runner on first and no outs, Edenfield came to the plate to face the “Million Dollar Arm” with a chance to extend the series to game three.

“I was still very, very, emotional. It was tough; the acceptance piece,” Edenfield recalled. “I think I was 0-2 and I was breathing some of the biggest breaths of my life. And I told myself the work has been done. You just have to trust it.”

She delivered a double. Runners on second and third. No outs. The crowd was on their feet as a base hit would tie the game against the dominating Canady.

Edenfield gave credit to the mentorship of her college coach for the peace she felt at the plate with her team’s season on the line.

“She told me this past week, ‘It has all been written. It’s just a matter of trusting our process and what that looks like. Control the ‘feelings’ part and come out with the facts,’ ” Edenfield said of the softball coach’s hardball life lesson.

Yes, there were questions about softball but it was the conversations in between those questions that remind us of why college sports, played by 17- to 22-year olds, is foundationally different than adult pro leagues.

“What did this team mean for you?” a reporter asked Alameda, who paused to gather herself before answering what was a question she answered from the heart.

“You talk about adversity,” she began, choking back tears. “It has definitely meant a lot. For me personally, it has been my rock (during cancer treatment). “(I) could come here for four or five hours and not have to think about what is going on.

“(The team) are so good about having love. ‘How you doing?’ Check in. And go from there. So it’s been cool, you know? It’s been part of my process — going every week — and now I’m going to have to call someone for that process to help me out. Yeah, it’s been a lot. It’s been emotional a lot. We’ll see how we move forward. I have a couple more infusions to go.”

Alameda had more to say about the life lessons they experienced together.

“It’s crazy. We talked about adversity in the beginning, not knowing this was going to happen,” she said. “We’ve had so many things hit us left, right and center, and we bounce back. I would just allude to what Michaela said, we’ve been a really tight group, so we’ve been able to handle any kind of adversity. And when I introduced the word adversity, I knew we would be travelling a lot, so the girls would be tired because we would be in a lot of different time zones. I had no idea Kennedy (Harp) would go down, we’d have a (campus) shooting, we would have cancer… I just had no idea all those other things would be coming, and they’ve handled it with great grace and pride and love and I’m just thankful for my situation in particular, too.”

The next question went to Edenfield who had been crying through Alameda’s answer.

“Oh God,” she said, between a sob and a laugh. “I can’t even look over (at Alameda).”

And then she spoke of what I believe is the reason collegiate athletics is so worth fighting for, and that is the personal development that occurs when a program does it right.

“She truly represents what she speaks of,” Edenfield said of her coach and life mentor. “You’ve got to think (about) 17- and 18-year-old girls deciding to commit to Florida State and you think about the word family. A lot of programs talk about family. I always said the reason I came to Florida State was because family was felt, not spoken. And it speaks volumes top down.”

Now looking directly at Coach Alameda, Edenfield said, “She would probably take the selfless route here, but this place would not be anywhere how it is without her. And I hope you know that.”

In athletics we talked about the collegiate years, from 17 to 22, being the most formative of a student-athlete’s life, where everyone in the building and in the community has an impact on the student-athlete, by their walk as much as their talk.

“I can’t tell you how many times life isn’t perfect and for someone to recognize that from a people perspective and from a softball perspective is so special here,” Edenfield said of Alameda, “because it’s about growing the game but it’s also about growing better people at the same time. I’ve just been so grateful for all five years I’ve spent here, not only to become a better softball player than I ever thought I would be but to leave here a better person, to leave here feeling I’m ready for the real world. For all the girls going through committing and deciding where to go, it speaks volumes when family is felt and not told.”

That short five-minute segment brought tears to my eyes and a smile to my face because it reminded me, and I suggest it should remind us all, that even though Edenfield received NIL compensation from FSU, she also earned a degree and it is abundantly clear she is grateful for the rich developmental experience, which again remains the essence of collegiate athletics even in this NIL era.

Not just women’s sports

I know what you are thinking, the cynic in you says FSU’s women’s programs are awesome and have always been about more than just money. And that may be a fair point as a stereotype. Yes, many women do express their feelings better than most men, including gratitude, but I have the benefit of being exposed to enough male athletes who are also earning degrees and are grateful for their collegiate experience, even if they don’t express it as eloquently as Edenfield.

In fact, FSU Athletics set a record for highest GPA on its football team and across all 18 sports, each of which averaged a 3.0 or better GPA. So obviously not every athlete is attending FSU just to collect their NIL paycheck.

Can we find just a little balance in the narrative we choose to write and talk about?

That CBS headline, while true, is one of many that are fueling a not-completely-accurate narrative that is eroding fan support for collegiate athletics. Those of us who love the game and can still see it’s redeeming value, need to balance the narrative by telling the tradional collegiate stories when we see them.

As I write this, the network ran a long, pre-game feature on FSU star pitcher Jamie Arnold who has raised over $11,000 thus far for a young fan, Bradley, who suffers from Cystic Fibrosis. Arnold is donating $25 per strikeout this season and encourages others to help his friend too.

For more information and to donate,

In the coming months I want do more old-school player features, which introduce players to readers in a way that could help to balance the narrative. What are their interests, college major, and life ambitions? Allow the readers to judge for themselves whether the player is appreciative of the opportunity he’s being afforded to develop as a person or playing strictly for the money.

Some thoughts after the game

Canady is the real deal as a pitcher and helped her own cause with a home run in a 3-0 win in game one and its fair to say the 2024 USA Softball Collegiate Player of the Year award winner is also a good interview and ambassador for both Texas Tech and Women’s Collegiate Softball.

But, it’s also objective to note, she didn’t single handedly win the series without help from the Seminoles and her teammates.

Going into the game, you knew FSU’s pitching would have to hold Texas Tech to two earned runs or less per game, which they did. And, the defense would have to play characteristically good defense, which they did not with seven infield errors alone in the second game, which accounted for both unearned runs in the 2-1 loss. That was a surprise.

I think we all thought generating runs would be a challenge. But if FSU could barrel enough balls, you would expect the No. 12 seed to kick the ball around enough for FSU to score more than one run. FSU did barrel some but too frequently they were right at a TT defender who fielded their positions better than expected.

Tip of the cap to Tech; they were a more complete team than expected.

Was it just the million dollars?

Let’s be honest. Canady didn’t transfer from Stanford to Texas Tech for the academics. There are 210 schools ranked between Stanford at No. 4 and Tech at No. 214.

I squirmed when I read this ESPN quote about her decision. “I feel like people thought I heard the number and just came to Texas Tech, which wasn’t the case at all,” she told ESPN. “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.”

Don’t miss the relevance of the second part of that quote as not only did Tech invest in an arm, in 2024 they invested in a sport with the hiring of Cary Glasco.

Glasco’s resume lends credence to the back half of that quote. He’s been successful at Georgia, Texas A&M, LSU and Louisiana, as well as at the professional level, so she did have reason to believe he could do what they just did, take TT to the Women’s College World Series.

Glasco has been a part of 12 NCAA Tournament appearances, six NCAA Super Regionals and three Women’s College World Series. Make that four. He also engineered three championships in the National Pro Fastpitch League, and a national championship at the 18U level in travel ball.

Obviously, the relevance of her quote is challenging. Programs with alumni bases with passion for a sport have always been able to invest in that sport by building eye-catching facilities, paying top dollar for coaches, and illegally paying players. Now it’s legal and out in the open.

How did Tech do it?

Do you recognize the name Cody Campbell? He’s the 39-year-old Texas Tech booster who formed the “Matador Club,” Texas Tech’s NIL collective.

A Google search on Campbell tells us his money comes from the sale of his oil company for $4.08 billion in cash and stock, and that he chairs TT’s board of regents.

You may remember when President Donald Trump wanted Nick Saban to co-chair a college athletics review committee? We’ll it was Campbell who was to be Saban’s co-chair. Yeah, that committee – the one Saban says there’s no reason for – and is now “on hold.”

Don’t sleep on programs like the Red Raiders or Lubbock for that matter. Love me some Buddy Holly, so I won’t hate on a town that counts two monuments to Holly among its top five attractions. Hard to believe that beautiful voice was silenced at 22.

Lubbock, a pretty-enough town of 267,000, is what I consider a Texas version of Tallahassee, only without the state Capital or the Gulf of Mexico or however we choose to identify with it. Let’s just say no one has ever woken up in either town wondering how they got there. You must try. Planes, trains and automobiles … and a burro just in case.

Lubbock is 381 miles from Dallas and 591 miles from Houston and there’s nothing but tumbleweeds, longhorn cattle and tiny towns like Spur and Muleshoe in between. Lubbock is 641 miles from Canady’s hometown of Topeka, Kansas, which could help explain her move as well as her friendship with KC Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes.

No, Lubbock is not Palo Alto, where within a short drive you can be watching the Giants in San Fran, the 49ers in San Jose, drive the Monterey Peninsula to Carmel, or spend a day at Half Moon Bay watching big wave surfers wrestle 60-footers at “Maverics.”

If you are going to invest $1 million in one player

More than in any other sport, a great softball pitcher can dominate a series like no other sport. And Canady is one of, if not the hardest throwers ever in the sport, consistently hitting mid-70s. Understand that in softball the pitching rubber is just 43 feet from the plate, where it is 60 feet away in baseball. A 75-mph softball gets to the plate as quick as a 115.5 mph baseball. The fastest pitch in MLB history is 105.8 mph.

While Seminole fans would have rather not have seen Canady, they did get to see one of the best to ever play the game.

“We’re talking about Bo Jackson. We’re talking about Herschel Walker,” Glasco said via ESPN. “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.”

While we find collegiate athletics in these troubling times, looking for a lifeline from anyone, let’s try to remind ourselves of those good things about college athletics that are still worth fighting for.