WCWS: Lonestar Edition
I'm not going to pretend that this hasn't been an exciting couple of weeks in college softball. After a flurry of games this weekend, the stage is set for the Women's College World Series finals. Oddly enough, both teams in the final game are from the great state of Texas, which as lame as it might seem is actually not a horrible thing.
For the last four years we have seen Oklahoma pretty much walk away with the championship. The one exception would be 2023 when they only beat Florida State by a couple runs in the final game. We actually haven't seen a run like that since the mid 80's to early 90's when UCLA was basically dominating every year.
If you scroll through the list of previous champions, you actually see a lot of the same schools over and over again. This year is a bit different though. Texas Tech had never made it to the tournament before, and now they find themselves facing off against last years runner up thanks in large part to the million dollar acquisition they made named NiJaree Canady.
After Stanford was knocked out of the tournament last year, their ace pitcher Canady was looking for a change. The Matador Club which is Texas Tech's NIL collective offering her a $1,050,024.00 contract to play for one year of her time at Texas Tech. Here's the way it broke down... A cool million for Canady, $50K for living expenses, and $24 for her jersey number. Sadly, college sports is starting to look more and more like the professional world.
In the end, it paid off, and now Texas Tech finds themselves facing off against a dynamic Texas team.
Here's how they got there...
On Friday Oregon beat Ole Miss to knock them out of the tournament. Meanwhile, Tennessee beat Florida to also send them packing home. On Saturday Texas Tech beat UCLA and Texas beat Oklahoma to send both of those losers to the elimination bracket. That set up the Sunday elimination games with Oregon facing Oklahoma and Tennessee facing UCLA. Tennessee won to move on to the semi final championship in their part of the bracket, while Oklahoma did the same to move on in theirs.
That left Oregon and UCLA heading back to the West coast. Welcome to the Big Ten... :P
Finally, yesterday we had the two games that determined the championship. It actually worked out well for the winning teams with Texas beating Tennessee and Texas Tech beating Oklahoma. If things had went the other way they would have had to play another game since the semi-finals is a double elimination format and neither Texas nor Texas Tech had lost a game yet.
So that's how we got here. Now on Wednesday we start the best of three series between Texas and Texas Tech. I know my nieces who are big softball players seem to be really excited about the fact that Texas Tech made it to the final.
I think we have already seen the answer time and again, but by the end of this week we should know for sure if money really can buy a championship.
My Sports Account - @bozz.sports
Posted Using INLEO
Do you think this move toward NIL deals will change the game in the long run?
I definitely think it already has. Just follow some of the coaches in any sport and listen to how frustrated they are about the transfer portal and NIL deals. I wouldn't be surprised if we soon see a mass exodus of some of the older guard like Izzo and others because they don't want to deal with it.