Softball Star NiJaree Canady Inks $1M NIL Deal With Texas Tech Collective

Last Updated on July 25, 2024

Former Stanford softball pitcher NiJaree Canady has committed to Texas Tech University and agreed to an unprecedented name, image, and likeness deal worth over $1M with the school’s third-party collective, according to The Athletic.

Canady’s first two seasons at Stanford saw her dominate the competition, leading the Cardinals to back-to-back Women’s College World Series appearances. The pitcher compiled 337 strikeouts and a 0.73 earned run average over 230.2 innings pitched in her sophomore season en route to winning the 2024 USA Softball Collegiate Player of the Year. She has two seasons of eligibility remaining.

The one-year, $1,050,024 deal with Texas Tech’s NIL collective, The Matador Club, is set to make her the highest earner in college softball and would place her around the top 20 athletes across all men’s and women’s collegiate sports, according to On3’s NIL evaluations. ESPN reported a six-figure offer from Stanford that would have made her the school’s highest-paid women’s athlete, which was not enough to sway her from joining the Red Raiders.

The Matador Club was formed in early 2022 with an initial focus on football, men’s basketball, and baseball. The group made waves after signing 105 TTU football players to NIL contracts worth $25,000 each in July 2022. The group’s agreement with Canady far exceeds the previous largest NIL deal for a softball pitcher of $175,000, according to The Athletic.

“This is 10 times higher than the biggest figures we have seen at Opendorse for college softball players,” said Blake Lawrence, the CEO of Opendorse, an NIL market, to The Athletic. “There are very few six-figure players, and they are barely into the six figures.”

The deal will pay Canady more than all but one college softball coach’s salary in the country. The University of Oklahoma’s Patty Gasso earns $1.625 million annually and is the only coach with an annual salary over $1 million, according to salaries from Front Office Sports. Gasso has led the Sooners’ softball program to four straight national championships.

The Red Raider softball program is coming off a 29-21 record and an eighth-place finish in the Big 12 with an 8-16 record in conference play. The team has reached the NCAA tournament six times in school history, last coming in 2019. The program has never made the Women’s College World Series.

After entering the transfer portal on June 17, Canady confirmed to ESPN that she visited the University of Tennessee, the University of Alabama, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Kansas. She was the most sought-after player in the transfer portal and chose Texas Tech over a return to Stanford after visiting Lubbock, Texas, this week.

Canady is joining newly-named head coach Gerry Glasco. Glasco is coming from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette after leading the team to five Sun Belt Conference regular season titles and NCAA Tournament berths in six of seven seasons. Canady is one of nine transfers joining the Red Raider softball program, including five players following the coach from his former school.

“I could never have imagined this,” Canady told ESPN. “But I feel like we need to invest in women’s sports. We saw it with women’s basketball this year: You invest in women’s sports and women’s basketball just blew up on a national stage. I think the same thing has happened with softball. … If I’m even a little part of that, that’s my whole dream.”

Canady will now be tasked with leading the Red Raider pitching staff and program into uncharted territory after back-to-back WCWS appearances with Stanford and a plethora of awards collected along the way.