NIL

Texas Tech Pitcher’s $1M Deal Proves What’s Possible For Women

by Stacy Jackson June 5, 2025 Texas Tech softball coach Gerry Glasco new a deal to get Canady needed to be higher than her agent’s proposed offer of $400,000. Reigning USA Softball National Player of the Year, NiJaree Canady, hit the ball out of the park after accepting her latest NIL deal with Texas Tech. […]

Published

1 month ago

June 5, 2025

Your Sports Nation

Softball, Sports, NIL Deal, College Softball

by Stacy Jackson

June 5, 2025

Texas Tech softball coach Gerry Glasco new a deal to get Canady needed to be higher than her agent’s proposed offer of $400,000.

Reigning USA Softball National Player of the Year, NiJaree Canady, hit the ball out of the park after accepting her latest NIL deal with Texas Tech.

Canady made headlines last July when she transferred from Stanford, and she is garnering public attention again with the historic deal worth $1,050,024 from Texas Tech’s NIL collective, The Matador Club. According to ESPN, the NIL deal is broken down into a million for Canaday, $50,000 for living expenses, and $24 for her jersey number. The star athlete who led Stanford to two consecutive Women’s College World Series appearances is now pitching in West Texas with the Red Raiders and showing other female athletes what’s possible in women’s sports.

“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.”

Red Raiders coach Gerry Glasco drafted up a sweet pitch to score Canady as a player at Texas Tech. “We’re talking about a once-in-a-generation player that’s already made a name all over America,” he said. “She’s a folk hero in our sport, and she’s a sophomore.” After two seasons at Stanford that only accounted for Canady hitting just 35 times, Glasco, who has three daughters who pitched and hit, made hitting a main focus in his pitch, and he didn’t overlook Canady’s worth. “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,” he said. “She wants the opportunity.”

While the athlete’s agent initially sought $400,000 to make the move from Stanford, Glasco knew the offer was too low for the rising star.

“She definitely put Texas Tech softball on the map,” said Tracy Sellers, a former softball player at Texas Tech. Sellers and her husband, John, a former Red Raiders football player, know Canady deserves a top NIL deal just as much as any male athlete. “She worked so hard to be the No. 1 pitcher in the country,” said Sellers. “I left that meeting and thought, this is who I would love to put a lot of effort into because of who she is.” The Sellers, who are top Matador Club boosters, previously donated $11 million to the athletic department in 2022. One million of the funding supported upgrades for the Red Raiders stadium.

Canady considered the offer with the Red Raiders for over a month before she accepted. The NIL deal for the Topeka, Kansas, native is about more than accepting a big lump sum of money, but about placing herself in a position to open doors for the next generation of athletes to benefit. She hopes to invest her money in opening her own facilities one day to coach youth.

As of today, the Texas Tech pitcher leads the nation with a 0.90 ERA (Earned Run Average). This year, she boasts 95 at-bats at .305 with 11 home runs and five doubles. She was honored as the Big 12 Pitcher of the Year and led the Red Raiders to win its first Women’s College World Series. The championship series continues for Canady and No. 12-seed Texas Tech on Wednesday as they face off against No. 6-seed Texas Longhorns at 8 p.m. ET.

RELATED CONTENT: Nijaree Canady Reportedly Lands ‘Unprecedented’ NIL Deal

Link

NIL

The new college sports agency is rejecting some athlete NIL deals with donor-backed collectives

FILE – Camp Randall Stadium is seen during an NCAA college football game between Wisconsin and Miami of Ohio, Sept. 12, 2015, in Madison, Wis. (AP Photo/Aaron Gash, File) The new agency in charge of regulating name, image, likeness deals in college sports sent a letter to schools Thursday saying it had rejected deals between […]

Published

27 minutes ago

July 12, 2025

Your Sports Nation

Wisconsin Miami NIL Lawsuit — FILE – Camp Randall Stadium is seen during an NCAA college football game between Wisconsin and Miami of Ohio, Sept. 12, 2015, in Madison, Wis. (AP Photo/Aaron Gash, File)

The new agency in charge of regulating name, image, likeness deals in college sports sent a letter to schools Thursday saying it had rejected deals between players and donor-backed collectives formed over the past several years to funnel money to athletes or their schools.

Those arrangements hold no “valid business purpose,” the memo said, and don’t adhere to rules that call for outside NIL deals to be between players and companies that provide goods or services to the general public for profit.

The letter to Division I athletic directors could be the next step in shuttering today’s version of the collective, groups that are closely affiliated with schools and that, in the early days of NIL after July 2021, proved the most efficient way for schools to indirectly cut deals with players.

Since then, the landscape has changed yet again with the $2.8 billion House settlementthat allows schools to pay the players directly as of July 1.

Already, collectives affiliated with Colorado, Alabama, Notre Dame, Georgia and others have announced they’re shutting down. Georgia, Ohio State and Illinois are among those that have announced plans with Learfield, a media and technology company with decades of licensing and other experience across college athletics, to help arrange NIL deals.

Outside deals between athlete and sponsor are still permitted, but any worth $600 or more have to be vetted by a clearinghouse called NIL Go that was established with the help of auditing giant Deloitte and run by the new College Sports Commission.

In its letter to the ADs, the CSC said more than 1,500 deals have been cleared since NIL Go launched on June 11, “ranging in value from three figures to seven figures.” More than 12,000 athletes and 1,100 institutional users have registered to use the system.

But the bulk of the letter explained that many deals could not be cleared because they did not conform to an NCAA rule that sets a “valid business purpose” standard for deals to be approved.

The letter explained that if a collective reaches a deal with an athlete to appear on behalf of the collective, which charges an admission fee, the standard is not met because the purpose of the event is to raise money to pay athletes, not to provide goods or services available to the general public for profit.

The same would apply to a deal an athlete makes to sell merchandise to raise money to pay that player because the purpose of “selling merchandise is to raise money to pay that student-athlete and potentially other student-athletes at a particular school or schools, which is not a valid business purpose” according to the NCAA rule.

Sports attorney Darren Heitner, who deals in NIL, said the guidance “could disproportionately burden collectives that are already committed to spending money on players for multiple years to come.”

“If a pattern of rejections results from collective deals submitted to Deloitte, it may invite legal scrutiny under antitrust principles,” he said.

On a separate track, some college sports leaders, including the NCAA, are seeking a limited form of antitrust protection from Congress.

The letter said a NIL deal could be approved if, for instance, the businesses paying the players had a broader purpose than simply acting as a collective. The letter uses a golf course or apparel company as examples.

“In other words, NIL collectives may act as marketing agencies that match student-athletes with businesses that have a valid business purpose and seek to use the student’s NIL to promote their businesses,” the letter said.