Texas Tech Softball's Gerry Glasco Details Timeline of The Matador Club's Involvement in Landmark NIL Deals

Texas Tech athletics have been competitive in the Big 12 across all sports over the years, but once NIL and the transfer portal became a thing, the Red Raiders have become a national contender.

Softball was just the blueprint, and during Big 12 media days on Thursday, head coach Gerry Glasco detailed the timeline of how Texas Tech leveraged The Matador Club to build a powerhouse in Lubbock.

"They came in my office last year in January, the legal team and the compliance team, and told me how they were going to do this and how they wanted to be in a position to win the national championship this year with NiJa Canady in her senior year," Glasco said. "That wasn't (the) coaching staff, that wasn't the athletic director, that's the compliance and The Matador Club and the booster club."

Back at it from 2026 Big 12 Softball Media Days 🥎📺

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NCAA rules prevent head coaches from recruiting players actively on opponents’ rosters, but there aren’t rules in place to prevent a third party from approaching those players. A previous report from Softball On SI mentioned The Matador Club exposing a well-known loophole, and Glasco's interview alluded to it.

"They had lawyers advising us, and the advice to me was to go coach softball," Glasco said. "Stay out of it, don't contact anyone, you've got to go quiet.

"They'd handle building the roster for us."

The Matador Club reportedly offered several players six-figure NIL deals while they were still playing for other programs. None of them had entered the transfer portal, and when they did, some of them had do-not-contact tags.

Texas Tech added Mia Williams from Florida, Taylor Panell from Tennessee, Jasmyn Burns from Ohio State, Kaitlyn Terry from UCLA, Jackie Lis from Southern Illinois, Desirae Spearman from New Mexico State, and Lagi Quiroga from Cal.

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— Texas Tech Softball (@TexasTechSB) January 29, 2026

Glasco's ability to get so many high-caliber players to commit to Texas Tech in a short amount of time had other coaches alleging that he or someone within his program was tampering.

Tennessee head coach Karen Weekly did shy away from calling out tampering within the sport shortly after Pannell committed to Glasco. However, her post didn't call out Texas Tech specifically.

"Contacting players (directly or indirectly) before their season ends and signing them to NIL deals before they enter the portal is wrong," Weekly said in a post on X. "Money isn’t the issue - tampering is!"

Some might believe that The Matador Club's involvement is taking advantage of a broken system, and maybe that is so, but in Lubbock, it confirms that Texas Tech is committed to winning by any means neccessary.

"I think it's a school that has a fan base, an alumni base, and then an athletic base that wants to win," Glasco added. "They have boosters that are big fans who graduated from here, and they're putting money into every program we have. They're extremely organized, they're extremely up-to-date. What they're doing with lawyers is amazing."

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