Does the NCAA have the balls? They clearly have evidence against the Tennessee football program for “inducement” in the recruitment of QB Nico Iamaleava if all we are hearing and reading is true. And Vols AD Danny White’s defense seems to be “everyone is doing it” rather than “we didn’t do it”. So does the NCAA have the balls to send a shot across the bow of college football? Maybe they should.
The NCAA is a joke, we all know this. But even with their loosey-goosey NIL guidelines slapped together after NIL became legal in some states and the federal government didn’t save their ass by intervening, one thing was still clear. You can’t influence or induce players with NIL money. That’s ALWAYS been the case in college football, before and after NIL. You can’t pay players to come to your school. So if this was known and Tennnesse ignored it while already under investigation for Jeremy Pruitt’s bags of cash to influence and induce players to come to Tennessee, then why not hammer them?
This could be a pivotal time for the NCAA and all of college football. If there is absolute proof of NIL inducement from a collective based in Knoxville and run by two alumni, then dropping the hammer on the program fresh off punishment for doing the same at a smaller level could be the shot heard around college football.
Tennessee is a cash cow though. They are an SEC team with a storied tradition, a rabid fan base, and they make the SEC and NCAA a ton of money. Hammering them with bowl bans and scholarship losses following the expensive yet somewhat gentle slap on the wrist for the Pruitt situation could be costly. But it could also scare the living crap out of other blue bloods. It has to be tempting for the NCAA but also scary. Lawsuits will come from any punishment and have already started. This could get costly and ugly.
Hammering Tennessee won’t stop inducement or cheating but it will make teams more careful when doing so and perhaps less blatant. When the $8 million NIL number was thrown around for Iamaleava I never saw a denial from anyone at Tennessee. It was all rumors of course and why address rumors right? But their silence about the whole thing also felt like a humble brag. It almost felt like the Vols were saying “Let them think that kind of bag is available here” in a way to increase interest from prospects. And it undoubtedly worked. Who wouldn’t check out Tennessee if their collective threw that kind of money around? But you can’t have it both ways, you can’t silently be cool with the inference that you bought an elite QB and gain the perks that come with it AND deny with the old “everyone is doing it” defense.
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This will be very interesting. The NCAA has the bullet in the chamber that can change or at least impact pay-for-play NIL cheating. And it’s pointed right at the Vols. The question is, do they pull the trigger? And should they?
