Tennessee softball coach Karen Weekly calls out tampering, NIL issues in college softball

Karen Weekly is going hard at tampering issues in college softball. Despite Tennessee’s immense success under her tutelage, the Lady Vols coach has an issue with where the sport stands in 2025.

Evidently, Weekly has no issue with NIL in itself, believing it’s a tremendous revelation that women can make money on their collegiate careers. However, her problem is with coaches and recruiters from other programs contacting players before they even enter the transfer portal. That has her calling out any and all tampering.

I think we can all agree on 2 things: 1) women making money in sports is awesome and long overdue; 2) contacting players (directly or indirectly) before their season ends and signing them to NIL deals before they enter the portal is wrong. Money isn’t the issue – tampering is!

— Karen Weekly (@KarenWeekly) June 13, 2025

“I think we can all agree on two things: 1) Women making money in sports is awesome and long overdue,” Weekly posted on X on Friday. “2) Contacting players (directly or indirectly) before their season ends and signing them to NIL deals before they enter the portal is wrong. Money isn’t the issue, tampering is!”

If you’re a fan of college athletics, it feels like this was inevitable. We’ve seen rumors of tampering in a myriad of other sports, and it would’ve certainly been naive to think that college softball was immune to the problem.

Karen Weekly has been around the bend and found success as college softball has evolved on and off the field. This is one change she won’t stand for, and she’s fighting for justice. We’ll see if she calls anyone out by name or if the NCAA takes notice of the Lady Vols’ leader’s warning in the future.

More on Karen Weekly, Tennessee Volunteers

Moreover, Tennessee made the Women’s College World Series for the second time in the last three seasons under Weekly’s guidance. There are plenty of memories that come along with that run, even if the Lady Vols would have preferred to keep things going all the way to the top. Still, she’s grateful.

“My heart is full because of the young ladies to my right and the young ladies in that locker room. They’re sad for all the right reasons,” Weekly stated earlier this June. “It’s not about wins and losses. It’s about the joy they’ve experienced being together every single day, and I think people saw that in the way we played. They saw them bounce back. They saw how resilient, how gritty and tough they were.

“This has been a group that has been just so much fun to coach. Because they allowed us to coach them, and everything we asked of them all through the season, they bought in completely and just made it really, really fun. My office and our clubhouse is right by the front door. And every one of these guys, they walk in, they have a smile on their face and they greet you.”

All in all, Karen Weekly has been leading the Tennessee program since 2002 and has found plenty of success during her time there, going to the Women’s College World Series nine times. Now, she’ll go back to the drawing board and look to put together another great group of Lady Vols to compete for next season. 

— On3’s Dan Morrison contributed to this article.