For the love of God, NIL is such a mess. As I’ve applauded the NCAA for at least trying to show some teeth in enforcing rule-breaking I just can’t sit still being continually treated like an idiot.
The latest? The Tennessee Volunteers are now under investigation for breaking NIL rules just a few years after the Jeremy Pruitt Chick-fil-A bags of cash nonsense. And yes, the NCAA needs to cut down on this stuff or just step aside, one or the other. But who are we kidding here? We’re being lied to at every turn.
This investigation is rumored to be surrounding star QB Nico Iamaleava and his rumored $8 million dollar NIL deal. At first, I didn’t believe such a number would be thrown at a high school QB, but with more and more evidence of the bags of cash thrown at Jaden Rashada by Florida, I’ll believe anything now I guess. This investigation is surrounding an NIL group, Spyre Sports Group, allegedly flying Iamaleava across the country to visit Knoxville with the Volunteers athletic department having full knowledge. Did this happen? Not sure. Did the Vols staff set this up? No clue. Will it matter? Nope.
We are being lied to two-fold here. The big, bad NCAA is flexing terms like “loss of institutional control” since this is another bag of cash deal for the Vols program. And that’s crap.
What will happen? A slap on the wrist similar to Florida State for coach Alex Atkins delivering a portal recruit to a booster collective. The Vols lost a lot of money but no bowl eligibility from the Pruitt situation which was deemed by the NCAA as one of the most blatant cases enforcement has seen. Did it help they fired everyone? Sure. But that’s not happening this time, and it won’t matter. The toothless NCAA will slap them on the butt and say don’t do it again.
And the NCAA has to play in between here, as usual. They go too hard on the Vols, and they will likely be the first program to officially begin the process of leaving as a member institution. Go too light? Then who needs the NCAA at all? They are the parent who can’t punish their kid properly because he will defy them in public, so they overcompensate with dumb stuff. This attempt to enforce NIL, while needed, is dumb stuff. It’s posturing.
More Sports News
And we are being lied to by the collective. The response to this pending investigation from Spyre Sports?
Spyre Sports, the Tennessee collective, releases a statement through attorney @TomMarsLaw in light of the NCAA investigation, specifically regarding QB Nico Iamaleava. pic.twitter.com/s3DK6Tztqa
— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) January 31, 2024
Cliff notes: Spyre Sports, located in Knoxville, TN, and co-founded by two former Vols grads with more than 100 Volunteer players as clients, didn’t care where Nico went to school. C’mon.
NIL has become a joke, and that fool Mark Emmert will go down in history as the guy who let this happen. While states were planning to legalize NIL, he just sat there like a bozo waiting for the federal government to intervene and put guardrails on things. And they didn’t give a crap and still don’t. He had zero plan, and here we are.
So, does any of this matter? It’s interesting to write about, and perhaps we all get a twinge in our shorts when we write about “lack of institutional control” and “NCAA investigations,” but it’s all a big show. The NCAA is full of crap, the collectives are full of crap, and kids are being bought left and right.
The only solution is to professionalize college football and create a similar model to the NFL. And we are years and years away from that.
