Record NIL deal breaks new ground for softball

Few college softball pitchers have a zero kicking off their ERA, and even fewer have six in their paychecks. As of last week, former Stanford pitcher, NiJaree Canady, has both.

Earlier this summer, Canady, an NFCA First-Team All-American, 2024 PAC-12 Pitcher of the Year, and 2024 USA Softball Collegiate Player of the Year, broke the softball internet by announcing her decision to transfer out of the Cardinal program. Last week, she topped the hype surrounding her previous announcement when news broke that she will be playing for Texas Tech next season and that her decision comes with a $1.2 million payout via Texas Tech’s NIL collective, The Matador Club.

It’s a significant sum, not just for Canady, but for the sport of softball, as it surpassed the former largest purse for a softball player: Monica Abbott’s $1 million six-year National Pro Fastpitch contract in 2016. And it’s well-deserved– although Canady’s deal is huge, her nation-leading 0.73 ERA is anything but.

Canady’s business move didn’t come without controversy. Transferring and NIL are both contentious topic in the world of collegiate athletics, regardless of sport. Athletes from Hailey Van Lith to Quinn Ewers have been criticized for their decisions to switch programs since the NCAA loosened its transfer restrictions. Add in NIL to the mix and the conversation gets even dicier for athletes. Canady didn’t escape this tricky landscape, as her initial decision to transfer drew critiques even before NIL formally factored into her decision.

Shortly after the initial news dropped, former Oregon and current Athletes Unlimited catcher, Gwen Sveckis tweeted : “Terrible. Take me back to a time before NIL when no one would sacrifice a Stanford education for a buck.” While former Washington pitcher and current softball broadcaster Danielle Lawrie shared a kinder take on TikTok, she was clear about her disappointment in the shifting “loyalty” of college athletes in the NIL era.

“I’m not going to sit here and say I wasn’t sad when I saw her name in the portal, but I wasn’t shocked,” she said of Canady, before adding that “the loyalty is different from the players who used to play.”

“We can all sit here and say that money doesn’t drive athletes,” Lawrie also acknowledged, “but now, with [NIL], unfortunately, it does. But I will not sit here and badmouth an athlete for making that decision.”

Lawrie’s withholding of judgment is refreshing in a topic of conversation that can quickly go sour. However, there’s nothing unfortunate about Canady’s transfer, even if she did so for the NIL money. Not only is the decision good for her economically, but it’s good for the sport of softball.

2023 and 2024 have been marquee years for female athletes. Coming off of an intense Iowa/LSU rivalry and a dominant South Carolina championship in women’s college basketball, record-breaking crowds, sales, and viewership in the WNBA, a hugely popular 2023 Women’s World Cup, the launch of two professional women’s volleyball leagues and the PWHL, and the first-ever Olympics to achieve numerical gender parity, women’s sports just can’t stop winning. After receiving the support and investment that are required of sports and leagues to thrive, women’s sports are seeing lucrative results thus far, even though the industry has yet to hit its ceiling.

The same can certainly be said for the sport of softball. Despite popular belief that dynasties are bad for sports, the numbers behind Oklahoma’s historic three-peat say otherwise. Last season’s final series between Oklahoma and Florida State drew 1.59 million viewers, an increase from 1.58 million in the previous postseason. This year’s final between Texas and Oklahoma improved on those numbers and was the most-viewed series on record, drawing 2 million viewers .

In 2021, on the heels of Sedona Prince’s viral TikTok video that detailed the discrepancies between the men’s and women’s March Madness tournaments, the Wall Street Journal published an article detailing similar discrepancies between the Women’s and Men’s College World Series, the most glaring of which was (and still is) differences in the respective facilities used. The MCWS takes place each year in Omaha, Nebraska at Charles Schwab Field, which houses 24,000 fans , whereas the WCWS takes place each year at Devon Park (formerly the USA Softball Hall of Fame Stadium) in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and houses only 13,000 fans . Although the WCWS’s stadium’s capacity has gone from 2,000 to 13,000 in just over 20 years, and seats 6,000 more fans than the next-biggest softball stadium in the U.S., the WCWS regularly sells out, indicating the demand is outweighing the supply–especially considering that many regional and super regional games at smaller venues sell out too, sometimes in minutes.

A lack of spectator space seems to be a recurring theme in softball. Just weeks after the 2024 WCWS broke viewership records, it was announced that softball games at the LA Olympics in 2028 will take place in Oklahoma City, rather than in Los Angeles. Of course, there isn’t a facility big enough to house an Olympic-sized audience in LA, but, given the growth we’ve seen in women’s sports, it’s a huge error on behalf of the USOC not to invest in a new elite-level softball stadium. What better time to amplify the sport than during the first Olympics in 20 years to feature softball in a shiny new LA-based stadium that could also be used for the WCWS in the future?

It’s a severe oversight, but downsized stadiums arguably aren’t the worst discrepancy between baseball and softball players at the college level. For many college coaches, the condensed WCWS schedule puts player health and safety at risk.

“The biggest inequity in the entire tournament,” former Michigan head coach, Carol Hutchins said in 2021, “is the fact that the men get to play into the end of June and they weren’t having it with us. Can’t do it. Can’t afford it.”

Although downtime is common in the MCWS, where, leading up to the final series, teams often get a day off in between games, it’s not uncommon for players in the WCWS to go the entire final leg of the tournament without rest. This is especially risky for pitchers like Canady, as it’s far more common for softball pitchers to go entire games without relief than it is in baseball.

There’s no better example of this phenomenon than in the 2007 WCWS, where Arizona pitcher Taryne Mowatt threw an astounding 1,037 pitches to claw the Wildcats out of the loser’s bracket and win the ‘07 title. Longtime softball fans will also remember the name Paige Parker, not only for her dominance in OU’s pitching circle and batting box but for pitching five out of six complete games to get the Sooners to and through the final series in the 2016 WCWS.

“It was the most uncomfortable I’ve ever been as a coach, feeling sick to my stomach that I could be really ruining this kid’s life,” Oklahoma head coach, Patty Gasso said of Parker’s feat. “Maybe she’s not able to lift her arm up again.”

Gasso was so affected by the experience that she mentioned Parker by name as a reason she used a record-setting five pitchers to secure the victory over Texas in Game 2 of the 2024 final series, rather than continuing to rely on her ace, Kelly Maxwell.

“We knew we couldn’t throw Kelly,” Gasso said . “We just can’t. I did that one time with a girl named Paige Parker. I’d never do it again. It wasn’t worth it.”

Maxwell ended up coming in as a reliever to ice the game and was effective in her supporting role. It was a commendable choice by Gasso, who secured a somewhat suspenseful 8-4 win by relying on her depth. But not all programs have bullpens as deep as OU’s (or coaches who care about their athletes as much as Patty Gasso), and it’s one of the many risks that impact softball players because of a lack of investment in their game.

Enter NiJaree Canady and her seven-figure NIL deal. Nowhere is the phrase “money talks” more true than in the college sports industry, and Canady’s deal sends a clear message: female athletes are worth the investment. Unfortunately for women’s sports, female athletes often have to prove their worth before they see any money, while the same can’t be said on the men’s side.

It’s counterintuitive, as all businesses need to spend money before they earn any–but Texas Tech’s financial trust in Canady is an encouraging sign that investors are paying attention to a wildly underfunded and underappreciated sport in a fast-growing industry. Whether or not this translates to new facilities or a revamped postseason format is yet to be seen. But Canady took the first major step in recent memory to make that happen by accepting her massive paycheck. Either way, she should be praised, not criticized, for making a smart business move.

Certainly, money talks in other sports, too. By now, everybody knows the name Caitlin Clark, not only for her basketball skills, but for the lucrative NIL deals she signed in college and further endorsements at the pro level. The same goes for Angel Reese, who is just as well known for her business deals as she is for her double-doubles.

Softball needs a similar movement to thrive, and the timing is right. With the 2028 Olympics on the horizon, Nijaree Canady might have started serious momentum in opening the door to softball’s big moment by becoming a star in the NIL market as well as in the circle.

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