As NiJaree Canady proves, NIL can make the downtrodden instant contenders, too
I’m not sure we saw this coming and yet we probably should have, for there are deep pockets everywhere, perhaps more than most among the tumbleweeds of West Texas.
We’ve been trained to see athletes’ new found ability to rake in profits off their name, image and likeness as a rich-get-richer equation, a blue-bloods-get-bluer dynamic.
And, yeah, sure, that’s inclined to be the case more often than not, but former Stanford pitcher NiJaree Canady’s decision to take a $1 million NIL deal to land in Lubbock tells us it doesn’t have to be and, you bet, one player can make a great deal of difference on pretty much any roster, save maybe a baseball team’s.
There are so many ways to look at it.
Like, did you know Patty Gasso should make north of $1.8 million in 2025 compensation and nobody else is in line to make a million. Or that Texas’ Mike White is reportedly making north of $600,000, and no other softball coach in the nation makes that.
Yet, here comes NiJaree Canady, a sophomore in Palo Alto only last season, rolling into Texas Tech where she’ll make more money than anybody in collegiate softball but Gasso, and if there’s a football player pulling down more than his head coach I haven’t heard about it.
So there’s that.
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