The unprecedented million-dollar recruitment of the nation’s best softball player

John and Tracy Sellers arrived in Lubbock, Texas, the evening of Monday, July 22, with dinner reservations and an intention: to woo the best college softball player in the world to play for Texas Tech.

The dinner was at Las Brisas, a white-tablecloth steakhouse just south of Texas Tech’s campus that serves up lobster guacamole and a 25-ounce bone-in ribeye. The player was NiJaree Canady, USA Softball’s Collegiate Player of the Year.

There were six seats at the table: the Sellers, Marc McDougal (a board member of the Matador Club, a Texas Tech-affiliated name, image and likeness collective), Canady and her parents. No coaches or university administrators. Just a few well-connected Tech supporters and a family with a menu full of options. The group made fast friends over a nearly three-hour meal.

Canady, a 6-foot pitching phenom from Topeka, Kan., was visiting Lubbock for the first time. She was less than two months removed from leading Stanford to the Women’s College World Series semifinals as a sophomore, garnering mainstream headlines in the process. A few weeks later, she entered the transfer portal, the biggest star of a burgeoning sport hitting the open market.

The youngest person at the table that night, Canady held all the power. But she also had a tough decision ahead, still wary of leaving Stanford behind. Texas Tech softball isn’t on the same level as Stanford, and cowers in comparison to a blue blood like Oklahoma, but the Sellers could offer a distinct perspective. John played football for the Red Raiders under Mike Leach. Tracy played softball at Tech and was on the search committee for newly hired softball manager Gerry Glasco, whom Tech lured from Louisiana after five Sun Belt Conference titles and a .773 winning percentage in seven seasons.

The Sellers could offer distinct resources, too. John co-founded Double Eagle Energy, a multi-billion-dollar upstream oil-and-gas company that operates in the nearby Permian Basin region of West Texas. He also co-founded Matador Club, which he oversees with business partner and fellow Red Raiders alum Cody Campbell. The collective aims to sign every athlete on campus to an NIL deal – achieving it in football, men’s and women’s basketball, softball, baseball, track and golf, including $25,000 each for football players and $10,000 each for softball. In 2022, the Sellers gifted Texas Tech athletics $11 million, with $1 million going toward facility upgrades to Rocky Johnson Field, Tech’s softball stadium.

And on Monday night at Las Brisas, the Matador Club was prepared to make Canady a ceiling-shattering NIL offer: $1 million. But Canady wasn’t ready to accept it.

She wanted to tour the Tech campus and facilities on Tuesday and spend time with coach Glasco. She wanted to discuss her decision with her former Stanford teammates and coaches. She wanted to weigh her options. All of it only endeared her to the Sellers even more.

“She’s a superstar,” John Sellers said. “I wanted her to make the best choice she thought she could make.”

Less than 48 hours later, they got the answer they were hoping for. Canady announced on social media Wednesday afternoon that she was committing to Texas Tech, and Matador Club announced it had signed Canady to an NIL agreement soon after. The contract is for one year and $1,050,024, as The Athletic previously reported. It’s believed to be the highest-ever NIL contract for a softball player — by a wide margin.

The $24 is for Canady’s jersey number. The $50,000 is for living expenses. And the $1 million is for Canady.

John Sellers declined to comment on the specific amount but described it as “a life-changing” deal.

“She deserves it,” he added. “She’s a complete game-changer for any program, but especially a place like Tech.”

Her commitment is a coup for a school with six NCAA Tournament appearances in softball, most recently in 2019, that has never reached a WCWS.

But as college football and basketball have become increasingly defined by the big-money free agency fueled by NIL and the portal, Canady’s million-dollar transfer marks a similarly seismic moment for college softball.

“It’s absolutely unprecedented for an annual compensation for a D-I softball player,” said Blake Lawrence, the CEO of Opendorse, a company that facilitates and manages NIL deals. “Canady might be getting paid more than every single softball player in her conference combined.”

Canady dominated in her two years pitching at Stanford, leading the nation in ERA as a freshman (0.57) and sophomore (0.65) and registering a sport-leading 337 strikeouts in 230.2 innings pitched in 2024. Her pitches feature a lethal combination of velocity and movement, particularly a near-unhittable rise ball that leaves a trail of hapless batters in its jetstream.

“She’s one of a kind,” said ESPN broadcaster Jessica Mendoza, a former Stanford outfielder. “She’s not just a pitcher. She can win games just on her own, and we haven’t really seen a pitcher like that in our sport, we’ve actually got away from that.”

According to an individual with knowledge of Canady’s transfer and NIL negotiations this offseason and two other sources involved with Stanford, Canady’s family first approached Stanford’s NIL collective, Lifetime Cardinal, in the spring of her freshman season in 2023. The family was seeking a seven-figure offer.

At that point, Stanford had been slow to embrace an NIL landscape drifting deeper into pay-for-play, and the athletic department had yet to claim an affiliation with Lifetime Cardinal. The collective didn’t extend an offer to Canady after her freshman season, and it came as a surprise to some there when she did not enter the portal in 2023.

Canady declined an interview for this article through representatives from her management team and Texas Tech. Canady’s mother, Katherine, did not respond to requests for comment.

This past April, Stanford athletic director Bernard Muir gave the department’s official blessing to Lifetime Cardinal, which has since involved several former Stanford athletes, including quarterback Andrew Luck, in the collective.

By the time Stanford reached a second straight WCWS last month, all parties realized a bidding war was coming for Canady’s right arm — but few outside of Lubbock could have predicted the final sale price. The going rate for a star pitcher in the portal was believed to be in the $100,000-$150,000 range.

Canady entered the transfer portal on June 17, drawing immediate attention from several elite programs. Texas Tech had to play catch-up. Glasco was hired June 20, and once he finally could reach out to Canady, he primarily dealt with her manager. Canady wanted to focus on traveling to Japan with USA Softball for an all-star event in early July, and her family wanted to insulate her as much as possible from what it knew would be a spirited recruiting process.

“It was different than any other recruitment I’ve been involved with,” said Glasco. “They really had a business-like approach to it early on.”

It also became clear that NIL would be a motivating factor in Canady’s ultimate destination.

A person familiar with the negotiations said Lifetime Cardinal made Canady an offer shortly before she entered the portal on the last day the window was open.

Canady also changed management teams, and her new representation quickly fielded both scholarship and NIL offers, Texas Tech and Matador Club among them.

Canady’s recruitment out of high school was limited by the COVID-19 pandemic, so when she returned from Japan earlier this month, she leaned into her second chance on the trail, scheduling visits to Tennessee, Alabama, UCLA and Kansas, her home-state school, while still leaving open the possibility of a return to Stanford.

Upon hearing about potential six-figure NIL offers being floated elsewhere, Lifetime Cardinal worked to raise more funds from a wider pool of donors, including several Stanford softball alums, and was preparing to make a much larger offer later this month that would be “within shouting distance” of Tech’s, according to a person with knowledge of Canady’s transfer process. 

“(Lifetime Cardinal was) incredibly competitive with every offer that NiJa was having thrown at her, and that’s saying something,” said Mendoza.

Still, Stanford’s chances of retaining the coveted ace withered after she touched down in Lubbock. Following dinner with the Sellers and McDougal on Monday night, Tech rolled out the Red Raiders carpet on Tuesday. Glasco gave Canady and her parents a tour of the facilities. He walked her through the roster he had already put in place for next season, featuring eight other transfers, five of whom followed him from Louisiana, including Sun Belt Player of the Year Mihyia Davis. Glasco knew Canady wants to hit too, emphasizing that she wouldn’t be confined to the circle.

Canady had expressed interest in personal branding and social media, so Glasco arranged a meeting to address how Tech could help foster that. They even appealed to the family’s Chiefs fandom, highlighting the school’s recently announced apparel deal with Adidas that features a brand partnership with Red Raiders alum Patrick Mahomes and his signature Adidas gladiator logo.

Glasco spared no detail, asking for the landscaping around the facilities to be touched up, the infield lined at Rocky Johnson Field and the scoreboard lit up for the visit.

“It was absolutely amazing to me to see how the entire athletic department jumped in to help us recruit,” said Glasco. “When NiJa first got here, I think there was a lot of skepticism that she might not like this place, this is a waste of her time. And the minute she walked on campus and saw the beauty, felt the love, things just clicked and we got the result that we got.”

Just before 3:30 p.m. local time on Wednesday afternoon, Canady posted a tweet thanking Stanford for “the ride of a lifetime” while announcing Texas Tech as her new home, just above a photo of her seated on a throne in a Red Raiders uniform.

“These past two years at Stanford have been nothing but incredible — I truly mean that,” Canady told ESPN. “My goal every year is to win the Women’s College World Series, so that’s my goal right now. … I think there’s a good young core coming in and a lot of good players from Louisiana.”

“We’re disappointed we won’t be able to continue nurturing (Canady’s) growth, but understand the dilemma she and her family were faced with,” Muir said. “It’s not my place to judge her and their decisions. We understand it and respect it.”

Eleven minutes after her commitment post, the Matador Club sent a tweet welcoming Canady to Lubbock. The Texas Tech softball account posted a link for season ticket deposits minutes later.

“I definitely think NiJa’s felt the love and support she’s going to get at Tech,” John Sellers said. “It speaks to what we’re willing to do here to create a good culture and win a lot of games, no matter what sport it is.”

How significant Canady’s $1 million NIL deal is to college softball and women’s sports writ large can’t be overstated.

Tech athletics generated $146.8 million in revenue in fiscal year 2023, according to the department’s NCAA financial forms, with football responsible for $80.3 million. Softball generated $1.38 million, but that includes the Sellers’ $1 million donation, and after expenses still posted a $1.15 million deficit. (In fiscal year 2022, softball generated just over $340,000 and operated at a deficit of $1.44 million.)  Glasco’s new coaching contract reportedly will pay him $1.33 million over five years, including $250,000 next season. Oklahoma’s Patty Gasso, believed to be the highest-paid coach in college softball, is set to make $1.8 million in 2024.

A select few women’s college players — Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, Livvy Dunne – have springboarded to national sponsorships and mainstream prominence in the NIL era. Still, Canady represents a new frontier for an Olympic, non-revenue sport.

Her NIL haul with Matador Club didn’t reset the market. It obliterated it.

“(Canady will) forever be the one of the faces of the early NIL transfer portal stories,” said Sue Enquist, UCLA’s seven-time national champion head coach from 1989-2006 and a trailblazer in the sport. “From a business perspective, it’s great to see our sport keeping pace with other sports that are growing.”

Yet with that degree of growth and attention also comes a certain level of scrutiny. Texas Tech softball, suddenly boasting World-Series aspirations, will have to shoulder the pressure that comes with those well-funded expectations.

All of it further emphasizes the arrival of big-money NIL into the sport.

“If Caitlin Clark would have entered the transfer portal after her sophomore year, where would the bidding war have ended up, knowing what you know now?” OpenDorse’s Lawrence said. “The bet here is that the rise of women’s sports, the rise of softball viewership, and a once-in-a-generation talent like Caitlin Clark is on the market.

“The $1 million payment,” he added, “could be justified.”

— The Athletic‘s Jayna Bardahl and Tobias Bass contributed to this report.

(Top illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photos: Eakin Howard / Getty Images)