Shortly after his Texas Tech softball team lost to Texas 10-4 in game three of the championship series of the 2025 Women’s College World Series, Gerry Glasco was asked about a familiar subject.
Throughout the Red Raiders’ run in the NCAA tournament and WCWS, there was a significant amount of attention paid to NiJaree Canady, the Stanford transfer whose pitching excellence helped Texas Tech improve from an eighth-place finish in the Big 12 in 2024 to the precipice of a national title the following year.
Most any conversation around Canady inevitably turned to her name, image and likeness deal with the school’s collective, which reportedly paid her more than $1 million.
When Canady and her NIL payments were mentioned in a question during Glasco’s post-game news conference, the first-year Texas Tech coach pushed back.
“Why is it different for a female athlete to be paid a million dollars than a male football player getting three million or four million for a male basketball player?” Glasco asked rhetorically. “I think that’s an interesting question because the value of NiJa Canady to our program is, I think, unbelievable. I’m not an expert. Somebody could really do an in-depth study. But I have no doubt it would exceed a million dollars of value. I think it was of great value for our school.”
Canady sent shockwaves through the sport after the 2024 season, when the reigning national player of the year left Stanford and got a seven-figure deal from the Red Raiders, who had never even made the super regional round of the NCAA tournament and were coming off a season in which they went 8-16 in Big 12 play.
Along with Glasco and a handful of players he brought with him from Louisiana, Canady immediately improved the program’s fortunes, leading it to Big 12 regular-season and tournament titles, a school-record 54 wins and its first-ever WCWS appearance. This season, Canady went 34-7 with a 1.11 ERA and was one of three finalists for USA Softball player of the year honors. She was also one of the Red Raiders’ best power hitters, with a team-high 11 home runs. Until she was pulled early in Friday’s loss, she had thrown every pitch for Texas Tech since the beginning of the super regional round, a run of seven consecutive games.
While her NIL deal was the largest ever for a college softball player, Glasco said he believed the rate at which it was brought up during broadcasts of Texas Tech games was “almost insulting” to Canady. Canady’s NIL arrangement with the school was cited constantly by television crews throughout the WCWS.
It highlights what Glasco believes is a double standard between how highly-paid female college athletes are treated versus their male counterparts.
“I think it’s interesting, you watch Ohio State in the men’s football game, national championship game, you don’t hear any announcers talking about NIL,” he said. “They just don’t talk about it. And yet, you know Ohio State had one of the highest two or three NIL payrolls last year in college football. I wonder why we talk about it for a female athlete.”
Glasco added that the exposure she brought to a previously overlooked program was invaluable. When Canady transferred to the Red Raiders, he was told there were 700,000 stories that mentioned Canady, Texas Tech and Stanford. He estimated that after Friday, the team had played 10 or 11 games on national television.
Though Canady struggled in her final game of an otherwise stellar season, giving up five earned runs in one inning while pitching her third game in as many days, she has one more season of eligibility remaining and is well-positioned to keep the Red Raiders in national title contention. In the hours before the first pitch of the final WCWS game, ESPN reported that Canady had signed another seven-figure deal to stay at Texas Tech.
If her coach has his way, it might not be the same kind of talking point next season that it was throughout this one.
“Personally, I’m thrilled for NiJa,” Glasco said. “I found it almost insulting to her at times when I listened to broadcasts, how much they talked about it because, like I said, I don’t hear it when we watch a men’s basketball game or a men’s football game. And to me that’s not right. That shouldn’t be that way.”