OKLAHOMA CITY — What was he supposed to do?
No, really, Texas Tech head coach Gerry Glasco wants to know. Because when he took over the fledgling softball program in 2024, he inherited a roster of three. A coach can’t play a game, let alone build a program back, with that.
Was he not supposed to use the tool waiting at his disposal, the one he could combine with one of his best coaching assets? Should he have sat back content with a runner-up finish after bulldozing 22 program records? Doesn’t everyone say they want to be a national power?
They do. And when they themselves can’t be it, they find ways to hate the ones who can achieve it.
“If softball needs me to be the villain, I’m all about it. Let’s go,” Glasco said on Wednesday at Women’s College World Series media day. “I embrace that role, it’s fun.”
A year after their first appearance as the WCWS darlings, the Red Raiders are back in Oklahoma City, having long since shed the label. They’ve irked collegiate purists and fueled debate about the so-called sanctity of the sport. Their transfer portal haul to do so is envious and villainous.
Glasco hears the claims growing ever louder on the sport’s grandest stage. Most teams here in Oklahoma City have a couple transfers. A few are led by one. Jordy Frahm (née Bahl), the NFCA Player of the Year, won two titles at Oklahoma before coming home to Nebraska. Texas Tech has 15 on a roster of 23, including seven they signed last offseason, with heavy hitters aplenty.
“You have to grow the program, and I think it’s confusing,” Glasco said. “We’re doing things that maybe [have] never been done before, or at least not been done in a similar fashion.”
It started with NiJaree Canady, the 2024 USA Softball Player of the Year, who made two WCWS appearances at Stanford. When Glasco scheduled her visit on short notice, he called the grounds crew to prune the flowers and manicure the grounds despite the heat and off-season.
Glasco is proud of the commitment from all levels of the athletic department in building a team that players said repeatedly on Wednesday is built for the postseason. But it’s actually not all that befuddling how he did it.
While the campus puts its best foot forward, the Matador Club, Texas Tech’s NIL collective, built an unprecedented offer. It’s better to be able to buy the flowers than see them from afar. They signed Canady to a jaw-dropping, one-year $1,050,024 deal — more than six times the previously believed highest pitcher NIL deal of $175,000.
Canady, who will make her fourth WCWS appearance chasing an elusive national championship, isn’t quite as bold in accepting the villain title as her coach. But she isn’t shying away from it, either.
What was the sport supposed to do? Stay in the shadows? It’s time to be bold.
“At the end of the day, transfers happen in male and female sports, so if you want the game to grow, this kind of stuff comes with it,” Canady said. “I just feel like it gets more eyes on softball, and at the end of the day, I feel like that’s what everyone wants.”
The overhaul is no different in softball than in any other NCAA sport, of either gender. In women’s basketball, LSU won its 2023 national championship with a transfer-heavy roster built in four-time champion head coach Kim Mulkey’s first two seasons. Mark Campbell made a name for himself rebuilding TCU’s roster every offseason. The transfer portal bulges with elite talent fielding offers that pad their bank accounts before they turn 20.
The Matador Club signed Canady to another deal worth more than $1 million to finish out her collegiate career at Texas Tech. The senior righty with a ferocious rise ball signed an NIL deal with Athletes Unlimited Softball League (AUSL) last week after the Texas Volts drafted her second overall in the 2026 College Draft.
After she ran out of gas and the Red Raiders fell in Game 3 of the WCWS to Texas last year, the Matador Club handled the roster-building to surround her with more talent.
Jackie Lis, an under-the-radar signing from Southern Illinois, is one of the team’s best hitters. She leads the Red Raiders in home runs (24). Mia Williams, a junior second-team All-American second baseman from Florida, is tops in doubles and runs scored. Left-hander Kaitlyn Terry, the 2024 Pac-12 Freshman of the Year, has a team-best 1.68 ERA and a 24-1 record.
“Looking at us as villains, it’s just something that we kind of figured, or I kind of also figured walking into Texas Tech,” Terry said. “But it also doesn’t define us.”
In an ironic twist of the schedule, Texas Tech begins the WCWS against a true underdog. Mississippi State toppled powerhouse Oklahoma in the super regional, an early warning that increased parity in the sport could cause chaos at Devon Park.
The Bulldogs took in the views upon arrival at the ballpark on Wednesday before a downpour wiped out afternoon practices. Alyssa Faircloth, the SEC Newcomer of the Year, transferred to play 90 minutes from home. Now she’s living a childhood dream she couldn’t have ever envisioned pitching at Troy.
For now, the Bulldogs are a villain’s antagonist. Texas Tech understands how quickly that, too, can change in the sport’s new era.