The Division I Competition Oversight Committee on Wednesday approved expanding the Women’s College World Series to a nine-day event, beginning with the 2022 championship.

The change to the format will eliminate the doubleheader for teams that lose on Day 1 of the event, and it will also add a day of rest for the two teams that advance to the finals.

Previously, the event was conducted over a seven-day period, which limited schedule flexibility. The Division I Softball Committee believes expanding the event two additional days will help enhance the championship for all those involved.

“What we’ve accomplished with this format change for the Women’s College World Series is further prioritization of student-athlete rest, recovery and preparation during the event and more flexibility to manage weather delays in Oklahoma City,” said Sandy Atkins, committee chair and deputy director of athletics at Troy. “The engagement from the National Fastpitch Coaches Association, particularly the active coaches who have participated in the Women’s College World Series, helped identify the day off before the championship series and minimizing doubleheaders as key recommendations to improve the championship.

“That focused feedback helped us narrow in on this alternative format that targets those priorities, while still preserving the format components that allow for a competitive series and quality experience for teams and fans.”

Host leaders in Oklahoma City said they can accommodate the format change next spring.

“We appreciate our hosts in Oklahoma City, in particular USA Softball and the University of Oklahoma, along with our broadcast partners at ESPN, for their support of this new format,” Atkins said. “Our committee believes this will be a positive development in the continued growth and enhancement of the Women’s College World Series going forward.”

Press release from NCAA.com

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Bulls pitcher Camryn Dolby organized a GoFundMe page on behalf of her teammate. The fundraiser’s description notes that Buchman felt numbness and tingling in her left hand at the end of July. After medications and a variety of tests, the third-year USF player was initially diagnosed as having had a stroke. Later tests revealed that the cause of Buchman’s issues was a brain tumor.

According to the GoFundMe page, Buchman is scheduled to have surgery on September 16th to remove the brain tumor.

The GoFundMe has raised more than $16,000 as of Monday morning, from nearly 300 individual donors. To contribute to the fundraiser, click here.

In her third year as part of the USF softball team, Buchman appeared in seven games in 2020 and in four games during the 2021 season. A Tampa native, she has scored five runs and stolen two bases during her collegiate career.

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A recent article that made significant allegations against members of the Ole Miss softball staff included cherry-picked facts and undisclosed biases, JWOS has uncovered.

Disgruntled parents and an ex-reporter are at the center of recent allegations and turmoil that have surrounded the Ole Miss softball program.

An article was published online last Friday that made serious and significant allegations about members of the softball coaching staff at Ole Miss. The original article led to additional articles that were published on media outlets that included Outkick, FoxNews, and the Daily Mail in Britain.

Information revealed to JWOS, however, casts doubt on the accuracy of the report, as well as provides context for the motives behind the report’s release and that of individuals who provided information that led to the report.

The author of the original article was Maren Angus, though the article did not include her byline when it was originally published. In the weeks prior to releasing the report on her own, Angus provided the JWOS editorial team with information and documents related to the previously-mentioned significant allegations about members of the coaching staff at Ole Miss, in an effort to entice JWOS to publish the article.

JWOS founder Justin McLeod accepted the documents and information from Angus, but declined to move forward with an article after reaching the independent determination that the allegations had a number of factual “holes” in them.

Angus published the article on Friday under the blog page of the website for the Running Poles Podcast, which she began after parting ways with Softball America in January 2020. The Twitter page of Running Poles refers to the podcast as being “commonly known as the TMZ of softball”.

[Editor’s note: Due to what were, in JWOS editorial view, significant misstatements of fact and disregard for anything other than salaciousness, we have chosen not to hyperlink the original article here.]

For clarity, the most damning of the allegations put forth in Angus’ article included an allegation that an Ole Miss assistant softball coach had a romantic affair with an active player. The article continued that the alleged affair was discovered by a second active player, who was presently dating the first.

Additional allegations included that the second player obtained evidence of the affair through text messages from the first player’s phone, then taped printed copies of those texts to the assistant coach’s office computer.

The Complaints

One of the documents Angus personally supplied to JWOS was a copy of the initial complaint that was filed against the Ole Miss coaching staff. Filed on May 10, 2021 and mailed to the NCAA Academic and Membership Affairs office, with copies also sent to the compliance offices at the SEC and Ole Miss, the complaint contains 23 bullet-pointed allegations of misconduct against head coach Jamie Trachsel and assistant coach Katie Rietkovich-Browder.

Worthy of note, the two-page complaint does not contain any mention of improper romantic or sexual conduct by any member of the Ole Miss coaching staff.

Two of the allegations that were contained in the May complaint included Trachsel telling multiple players that they were “not good and would never play here at OM” and, according to one bullet point in the complaint, Trachsel “consistently muddles (sic) “what the f***” when players didn’t or don’t meet her standards during practices.”

On July 29th, a second complaint was filed by the same parent that filed the initial complaint. The July letter was mailed to Ole Miss Athletic Director, Keith Carter.

The July letter discussed the lack of response to the original complaint and alleged a number of NCAA bylaw violations before also alleging a “sexual misconduct scandal” in paragraph #4 of the same letter to Carter.

Based on a timeline of events compiled by Angus and provided by her to JWOS, the alleged “sexual misconduct scandal” was said to have happened in January 2021, four months before the original complaint was filed and six months before the follow-up complaint. The alleged affair was not presented until the follow-up complaint in July.

According to Angus, both complaints were filed by the parents of now-former Ole Miss student-athlete Mackenzie “Mac” Barbara. In Angus’ original article, the Barbara family was described as “one family who wasn’t afraid to go on the record about their interactions with Trachsel…”

In Angus’ article, Mrs. Corrie Barbara was quoted detailing a negative interaction between her daughter and Trachsel that arose from Mac Barbara seeking to leave Ole Miss in March 2021 to pursue an opportunity with the Italian National Team program. Barbara would be able to compete for a spot on the nation’s playing roster for the Tokyo Olympics.

Missing Evidence

Returning to the allegations of a “sexual misconduct scandal” levied within the second complaint, that complaint notes a player named as “Super Senior 2” obtained screenshots from the phone of “Super Senior 1”; who was the player described as having the alleged affair with an assistant coach.

The third paragraph of Angus’ original article also refers to the text messages, though Angus herself later confirmed to members of the JWOS editorial team that she has never seen the alleged text messages and does not possess a copy of them.

In Angus’ original article, a reference is made of “bribing the players involved with scholarship money to remain quiet”. The article accuses Trachsel of orchestrating the cover-up of the alleged affair.

When she spoke to members of the JWOS editorial team, Angus expressed a belief shared by herself and others that a third “super senior” had drawn the short straw in the disbursal of scholarship money. Speaking about the third super senior, who transferred from Ole Miss to another Power 5 school this summer, Angus alleged that Trachsel had taken scholarship money that had been promised to that player and instead used it to “bribe” the two players involved in the alleged affair.

Thanks to the NCAA’s extended eligibility waiver that was granted to all active student-athletes following the 2020 season’s abrupt end, players may retain a “super senior” year of eligibility but, beginning with the 2022 season, any scholarship money for such players must come from the 12 scholarships allowed by NCAA rule. The waiver regarding the scholarship cap applied to the 2021 season and was a one-time-only exception.

Following Angus’ original article on Friday, JWOS spoke with multiple sources that detailed a different chain of events than those that Angus herself had portrayed to our editorial team. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, those sources noted that Ole Miss had initially offered a certain scholarship amount to the third super senior for the 2022 season and later raised the amount offered to match the scholarship that the player was on in 2021. Nevertheless, the third super senior elected to enter the transfer portal and depart the program.

Loyalty to a Former Coach

In the May complaint, four additional bullet points are dedicated to the resignation of former head coach Mike Smith, which occurred in December 2019. A paragraph within the July complaint also discusses Smith’s departure from Ole Miss.

Reasons for Smith’s departure are noted in the May complaint as “being over 8 hours of practice time”. The May complaint includes similar allegations of being over practice hours against Trachsel and the current Ole Miss coaching staff. The July complaint, referencing same, notes “Women Head Coaches talk about being treated as equals to their male coaching peers which means that no one should be above the rules and the same punishments should be handed down…”

In a phone conversation with JWOS founder Justin McLeod prior to the release of her own article, Angus said that she believed that the Barbaras and other families of players who had transferred from the Ole Miss program “were still pissed off about Mike [Smith] getting fired and now Jamie is doing the same stuff [that]he got fired for.”

During the same phone conversation, Angus noted that she believed the “sexual misconduct scandal” allegations were true and when asked by McLeod if she thought the allegations were being used as a “means to an end” to affect the goal of Trachsel being fired, Angus responded “I think that’s part of it, yeah.”

Ole Miss is currently conducting an investigation into the allegations and a resolution is expected within the week.

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The game, between Muskogee, Oklahoma and Chesterfield, Virginia brought in a crowd of 409,000 viewers, according to ShowBuzzDaily.com. While that number is down from the 2019 Championship game, Oklahoma’s 9-1 win is the 3rd-most-watched Little League Softball championship game ever.

Also worthy of note: the 2021 title game started at 5 pm Eastern time, compared to a 10 pm Eastern start in 2019 when the LLSWS was held in Portland, Oregon and the Pacific time zone. These was no game in 2020 due to COVID-19 and this year’s event was held in Greenville, North Carolina.

Muskogee’s championship victory was the 2nd-most-watched program of the day on any ESPN channel and any cable sports channel, finishing behind only Red Sox/Yankees which aired directly following the LLSWS title game.

Interestingly, the championship game between Oklahoma and Virginia was not the most popular LLSWS game on television this year; that title went to the semifinal game between Robinson, Texas and Chesterfield, Virginia, which drew 413,000 on ESPN2. That semifinal game finished 3rd in total viewership on its day of airing, behind popular opinion show Pardon the Interruption and the NBA Summer League Championship Game, both of which aired on ESPN.

TV Audience Numbers for the last five Little League Softball Championship Games: 

2016-  Championship Game  193,000  on ESPN 2
2017-  Championship Game  360,000 on ESPN 2
2018- Championship Game 535,000 on ESPN
2019- Championship Game  473,000 on ESPN
2021-  Championship Game 409,000 on ESPN

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Among the crop of AU rookies – a group that makes up roughly 1/3 of the league’s 60-member pool of players – are Olympians, veteran professionals, and players fresh out of college. AU held a college “draft” earlier this spring that saw a dozen players earn invitations to play in the league, and a late-spring open tryout also saw four additional players signed.

Here are five first-year AU pros worth watching this season…

Amanda Lorenz, OF
Lorenz was drafted in the first round of Tuesday night’s Week 1 player draft and was the first AU rookie position player to be selected. Lorenz’s bat remains one of the most lethal in the nation, staying consistent with her scouting report from Florida and with her traditional pro team, the USSSA Pride. Her high draft position right off the bat shows that her offensive capability is still fearsome, though her general “softball smarts” have also gained acclaim. She could easily be a quick leaderboard contender in AU Season 2.

Sydney Romero, IF
The ability to play virtually the entire infield is a major positive in Romero’s scouting report, but like Lorenz, she also hasn’t lost anything since her stellar collegiate days. Romero played with the USSSA Pride and with Team Mexico this summer, finishing just shy of an Olympic medal in Tokyo and adding to her professional resume with the Pride. Romero’s bat was consistent during the Olympic Games, and she’s equal parts power and get-on-base. AU made a good call in signing Romero, and you can expect the usual heroics at the plate and on defense from the ex-Sooner.

Sis Bates, IF
One of the most celebrated players during her college days, Bates gained significant notoriety for her defensive wizardry, occasionally earning comparisons to the stellar glove work of former New York Yankee Derek Jeter. Now Bates is set to begin her professional career with AU, and you can bet that her defense will be front and center. Bates was not a bad hitter in college – she was a terrific on-base threat, as a matter of fact – but her insanely-smooth glove work is still her best-known feature. Look for her to continue that mastery as a pro.

Aliyah Andrews, OF
Speaking of defense, the legend of Air Aliyah grew every time that Andrews left her feet for a catch this season while playing for LSU. A tremendous speed threat at the plate and on the base paths, Andrews forged her own legacy with diving catch after diving catch and even made the few that she missed look pretty impressive. Aliyah, like Bates, is well-known for her defense but also brings a offensive component in her skill set. In the solid pool of pros in AU camp, Andrews may find herself slotted as a bottom-of-the-order table-setter in the lineup, but with her speed, she is a difference maker no matter where she is.

Sami Williams, IF
Williams was one of the last four players selected in the Week 1 draft, but Cat Osterman’s Gold team got a steal with the former Iowa State infielder. Williams is still seen as something of an unknown commodity to some, thanks to playing for the seemingly small-market Cyclones, but if you don’t know the player they call Slammin’ Sami, then get ready. Williams wields a wickedly-powerful bat at the plate and can smash a home run as easily as she can a single up the middle.

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Former Arkansas pitcher Autumn Storms took to social media on Monday to respond to some apparent intrigue about injuries that she endured during the 2021 season.

Storms played her “super senior” season with the Razorbacks in ’21, collecting a 1.42 ERA in 83.2 innings of work. While opposing hitters hit just .199 against her on the year, Storms missed some time throughout the year and recorded fewer innings than anticipated. Entering the season, she was expected to form a top-level 1-2 punch with Mary Haff in the circle, but that knockout punch only appeared on a limited basis during the year.

On her Twitter account on Monday evening, Storms wrote in a series of tweets, “I have gotten a lot of questions post softball about what happened this last year with my injuries, I’m here to set it straight. My back had gotten stress reaction in my L4 vertebrae and a herniated disk. We tried so many different shots and procedures to help calm my neuropathy. The best thing I could do was rest. After I was feeling a little better we eased back into pitching. Even today I still have neuropathy, but that is besides the point. Going into the Georgia series I finally got to pitch again and felt something different in my arm.

“I ended up having a very small tear in my pec muscle of my pitching arm and had to take more time off. I know all in all I didn’t have the best year of anyone in the Razorback softball organization nor did I need to or have to justify my year this year, but just know that I gave my entire body to play this sport and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.”

During her career at Arkansas, Storms was a 2-time All-Region honoree (2017 and ’19) and was a Second Team All-American selection as a true junior in 2019. She ended her Hogs career with 53 wins in the circle and 391 career strikeouts.

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Tony Baldwin took a while to secure a coaching staff, but once he made his decisions, that staff shaped up in impressive fashion.

As scooped by JWOS over the weekend and officially announced by Georgia on Monday, the Bulldogs are adding J.T. D’Amico and Chelsea Wilkinson as assistant coaches. D’Amico, the program’s top assistant, is a defensive guru, while Wilkinson will be the pitching coach in her return to her alma mater.

Pulling D’Amico from Washington was quite a coup for Baldwin. A longtime Husky assistant, D’Amico spent fourteen years in Seattle and helped that program maintain a reputation as a defensively-stellar squad. Sis Bates got many headlines during her time at UW, and deservedly so, but the entire Husky team was fairly defensively-sound around her and D’Amico deserves much of the credit for keeping that trait alive.

D’Amico may not look like the flashiest hire to a general softball fan, but Bulldog fans can rest assured that one of the top assistant coaches in the game is now headed to Athens. D’Amico’s defensive prowess will help Georgia immensely and he also brings the experience of a former pro head coach (USSSA Pride, 2013) and a number of deep postseason runs while at UW.

Hiring a defensive-minded coach as his top assistant is a bold move by Baldwin, but it’s a move that could pay dividends right away.

On the pitching front, Baldwin pulled off a coup of a different kind in convincing Wilkinson to do an about-face. After agreeing to join the staff at Louisiana-Lafayette earlier in the summer, Wilkinson will now instead return to her alma mater and guide the pitchers who are seeking to be where she once was.

Wilkinson is still young – easily the youngest member of the full-time coaching staff – but has a 3-year stint at North Carolina State already under her belt. More elbow grease is going to be necessary with the staff at Georgia than if she had remained a Ragin Cajun, but the natural tie to her alma mater should play a role there, too. The Dawgs are young and raw in the circle, even coming off of a WCWS berth, and Mary Wilson Avant isn’t there to shore up the pitching staff any longer.

Those three years with NC State in Raleigh were good experience with Wilkinson, but her coaching “chops” still need to be fleshed out a bit. The short length of her resume alone puts her in the lower half of the SEC’s pitching coach ranks, but that’s a position from which she could just as easily vault as wallow in it.

Some were quick to call Baldwin’s hires an All-Star staff and while that’s a bit too strong of a statement at this point, it’s an attainable moniker for this staff. Baldwin will retain the hitting instruction – while also adding program great Alyssa DiCarlo as a volunteer assistant coach to assist in that area – and he now makes the final decisions about all things. D’Amico can do wonders with the defense and Wilkinson is in the most interesting position of all by managing the pitching staff.

Georgia could finish 11th in the conference again next year or, just as easily, they could wind up in the top half of the league. Baldwin and Co. are one of the more well-rounded coaching staffs in the SEC and now they just need to see on-field results.

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“This was about me, my happiness, my mental health, and trying to find a place that I really felt like I could thrive.”

With that thought, Ally Shipman put to bed any doubts about her motives for transferring from Tennessee. JWOS spoke with Shipman in an exclusive 1-on-1 conversation on Wednesday night after she announced her intentions to transfer and play at Alabama.

After entering the portal in late June, Shipman said on Wednesday that a desire to be present for her team during the season meant that thoughts on entering the transfer portal didn’t even begin until after Tennessee’s season ended.

“I’m always going to be really focused, wherever I’m at, and I was completely committed to my time at Tennessee and to them and to the team. But at the same time, I always kind of felt that I just wasn’t able to be myself a lot there,” Shipman said. “I had a pretty interesting run at Tennessee, with a lot of different things between my injury and then Covid. Just a lot of different hard hits, and that has nothing to do with the program at all. But this season was really difficult for me, not just performance-wise on the field but off the field, as well. I never really thought about getting into the portal until our season ended, because I was committed to winning as a Lady Vol this season. But once the season ended, I started talking to my parents about it and talking about it as a possibility. I spent a couple of weeks just in that in-between phase of ‘Do I do this?’ and then finally decided to jump in.”

While we’re on the subject of the Lady Vols’ season ending, Shipman was quick and particular to note that on-field happenings – including Tennessee’s early postseason elimination – were not factors in her decision to transfer.

“None at all. It had nothing to do with performance on the field or the team winning or losing… it was bigger than that. It was about me, my mental health, and me as a person before a player,” Shipman noted. “I believe 100% in those girls and I believe in that team. It had nothing to do with winning and losing or making the World Series… this was a ‘me’ thing.”

Describing entering the portal as incredibly stressful, Shipman noted that “a lot of thought and a lot of prayer” went into her decision to transfer.

“It was scary,” Shipman said with a small chuckle. “You don’t know what anybody is going to have [available], and you don’t know where you’re going to end up. And honestly, you don’t know if you’re going to go into the portal and then there’s going to be nowhere else that’s going to be better for you situationally. So it was a really scary thing for me, and I spent a lot of time with my parents talking about the pros and cons of staying and the pros and cons of leaving. I think the scariest part was actually clicking that ‘Submit’ button on the transfer paperwork… it actually makes it official and it was one of those where I just closed my eyes and clicked it, and then it’s done and you went for it.”

Once her name appeared in the transfer portal, Shipman proved to be a hot commodity. She might be the biggest portal entrant this calendar year and she garnered interest from an appropriately-high level of potential new homes that were interested in trying to add her to their rosters. From day one, she knew what qualities she wanted to find in a new home.

“I was definitely looking for that culture piece as my number one,” Shipman said. “I wanted to be in a place that cultivated me as a person and that I felt truly cared for me as a person over a player. I wanted to be at a school where it felt like a family. I loved Tennessee, the coaching staff, the people, and the players, but it just didn’t feel like quite the right fit for me. Going into it, I didn’t know 100% what I wanted… my top things were who has the best culture? Do I know anybody [on the team]? Do I know any of the players? And then also, are there going to be any options to be close to home, where my family lives in Knoxville now? And are they still going to be competitive?”

Rumors have flown a-plenty since Shipman’s decision to transfer went public, and she’s heard many of them herself. On Wednesday, Shipman spoke directly about many of the rumored reasons and took the time to debunk some of the more popular – yet incorrect – trains of thought.

JT Shrout, a former Tennessee quarterback, is Shipman’s significant other and rumors flew that she was leaving Tennessee to ‘follow’ him. Shrout transferred to Colorado earlier this summer, but that was a non-factor in Shipman’s decision to transfer.

“No. I hate that rumor,” Shipman said matter-of-factly. “I had coaches that asked me about that, actually. But no, that wasn’t a factor at all. We’ve done a great job with long distance since he left; of course, I miss him a lot, but that was not any reason for me to leave.”

Equally irrelevant in her decision were Tennessee’s coaching moves. Shipman entered the portal shortly after news broke of Tennessee’s plan to hire Chris Malveaux as hitting coach following Ralph Weekly’s retirement as co-head coach, but that timing was coincidental if anything.

“I kind-of had a feeling that Ralph would be retiring this year,” Shipman said. “And Malveaux coming into that program is a huge addition for them. I’m super excited to see what he’s going to be able to do with those hitters. But this was about me and trying to find a place that I could really thrive, and it had nothing to do with Ralph even or Malveaux coming in.”

After whittling down the initial list of interested programs, Shipman took just two official visits to potential new homes. It wasn’t her plan to decide after just two, but once she got on campus in Tuscaloosa, things just felt right and it didn’t take long to realize that she wanted to be part of the University of Alabama.

“[Alabama] actually sat me down in their film room and showed me some highlight video from the World Series, and you could see how much the team loved one another and loved the coaching staff,” Shipman noted. “I had goosebumps watching these videos seeing things like when Lexi Kilfoyl won a game, the first one out of the dugout was Montana Fouts, cheering her head off for her. Little things like that, you could see how much they cared about one another. That was one of the big things for me… I knew right then and there. Somebody told me ‘there’s a feeling you get when you know you’re at the place you’re meant to be.’ By the second day, I was like ‘I know this is the place that I’m meant to be.'”

When she hits the field at Alabama, Shipman will be tasked with catching Fouts on an almost-daily basis. She laughed lightly when she talked about Fouts, who Shipman spoke with multiple times before committing to the Crimson Tide.

“It’s incredible; she’s the best pitcher in the nation,” Shipman said. “I loved catching [Tennessee pitcher] Ashley Rogers, and I love Ashley Rogers to death, you know. And I feel like with Montana, it will be similar to that. I talked to Montana a couple of times after I’d gotten into the portal and really hit it off with her. That was another factor there, and I’m really excited to catch her and get to work with her.”

Comparing her commitment to Tennessee as a high school recruit to her more recent commitment, as a “portal recruit” if you will, to Alabama, Shipman drew stark differences between the two decisions and her feelings upon making them.

“I think they were pretty different, and I think the biggest part of that is, you know, I’m 21 years old now, not 13. I think my priorities were different when I was thirteen, and as you mature and age, obviously they’re going to change. I think that was one of the downfalls of early recruiting. But like I said earlier, I loved my time at Tennessee and I have zero regrets about choosing Tennessee in the first place. This was different, and I think the majority of why is due to the fact that I’m older and my priorities have changed now.”

Tennessee and Alabama may not play until Shipman’s redshirt senior season in 2023, but whenever the two teams do meet, Shipman doesn’t know how she’ll feel to see her past and present worlds collide. “I have no idea what to expect!” Shipman said. “I’m still pretty good friends with a lot of girls [at Tennessee], but when you get into competition mode, things switch very fast. I really have no idea what to expect.”

In Tuscaloosa, Shipman will have the chance to start a fresh slate and build a new legacy with the Crimson Tide. It’s an opportunity that she says excites her. “It’s a fresh start,” Shipman said of heading to T-town. “It’s something new for me. You know, some people have said that living under the shadow of [older sister & former Tennessee All-American]Maddi was too much for me, but that wasn’t the case at all. Maddi is my biggest supporter. I’m just excited; a fresh start, it’s incredible. And my whole family is behind me, they’re all supporting me. Even Lady-Vol-for-life Maddi is 100% supporting me and it’s really exciting to have everybody behind me.”

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What is NIL?

The acronym stands for Name, Image, and Likeness, after the NCAA regulation that has, in the past, prohibited college athletes from benefitting from their own achievements. A player who was at the top of their game couldn’t have their own brand or truly benefit because of that success; the only benefit received under previous NCAA guidelines was a previously-agreed-on amount of scholarship dollars and an increase in non-revenue social media following.

Recent Supreme Court and legislative decisions opened the door to allowing college athletes to benefit from their own brand and achievements. On Wednesday, the NCAA suspended their guideline that governed NIL and opened the door officially for athletes to benefit from their own brands.

What is changing because of NIL?

College athletes – including softball players – now have the opportunity to sign sponsorship and endorsement deals with anyone and to be paid for those deals. Active college athletes can appear in television commercials, post sponsored ads on social media, and otherwise endorse products of any kind.

What is NOT changing because of NIL?

This is not a way of college athletes being paid salaries. Athletes will be paid for their own personal brand, and will only be compensated if and when they personally endorse a sponsored product. The NIL changes are really a “happy medium” between the previous college athletics model and the desire of some for college athletes to be paid as salaried employees.

What does NIL mean for softball?

Athletes who will benefit most from NIL are those who have either achieved significant prowess on the field, or who have already put work into building their personal brands without compensation before this time. Star athletes like Oklahoma slugger Jocelyn Alo could reach endorsement deals based off of their tremendous success on the field, while some like Montana Fouts could also benefit from a tremendous social media following.

Biggest winners and losers

Had this legislation come one year earlier, then players like Haley Cruse and Odicci Alexander would have been the big winners. Instead, they now fall into the other category. With the ability to profit off of NIL, college athletes will be a hot commodity – Cruse’s social media prowess and Alexander’s heroics during the Women’s College World Series would assuredly have earned each a number of endorsement opportunities. Without the collegiate platform, those incredibly-marketable athletes have to maintain their own platforms – which they can, absolutely, but in an entirely different vein.

Some will disagree with this, but the biggest winner might be the sport as a whole. Only some softball athletes are at the level of receiving big-dollar or major-notoriety endorsements, but how many companies located solely within the state of Arkansas could Braxton Burnside have signed with this year? How many businesses in Lexington, Kentucky want to jump on the Kayla Kowalik train as she speeds around the bases? Gabbie Plain might be the most successful athlete on Washington’s campus right now, and Seattle is a major media market. With every softball player who signs an NIL endorsement deal, the game will continue to reach new eyeballs and will continue to grow.

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