Reactions to Tennessee cutting Nico Iamaleava:
- I think a lot of us realized Iamaleava breaks down to “I am a leava’” and weren’t confident enough to fire off the joke immediately. That’s why we didn’t see that joke as much yesterday as we should have and we’re now seeing it everywhere this morning. As a part of the blogging industry, I apologize for not pulling the trigger yesterday before lunch. This should have been a fun piece of Friday content. He’s a leaver!
- I don’t know exactly what happened, so if Tennessee somehow screwed over Iamaleava—if they promised him something and didn’t deliver—I retract everything that follows. It looks like what happened was that Iamaleava’s business managers decided he wanted more money than he was getting through the contract he signed. That’s what ESPN and others are reporting. But if that impression’s incorrect, my bad for perpetuating it. Now, to perpetuate it.
- Nico Iamaleava wasn’t great last year. He wasn’t bad, but even against Alabama, Chris Brazzell II was the hero. A lot of college football talkers ended the season still publicly believing in Iamaleava, but that was only because they’d hyped him so much over the nine months leading up to the season. They had too many chips in the pot. Iamaleava was the Heisman sleeper who stops being a sleeper because so many people call him their sleeper. He wasn’t close to Heisman good, but he also wasn’t bad enough to force his supporters to fold. This offseason, a lot of them quietly disinvested, but the takes were out there as late as December.
- That hype was the only thing Iamaleava had working in his negotiating favor. In that way, he got unlucky. He would have been better off if the hype didn’t exist. There wouldn’t have been anything to grasp onto. If he hadn’t been a preseason darling last August, the narrative this April would have been the opposite: “This guy isn’t living up to his recruiting ranking.” He wasn’t bad enough to justify that narrative, so this offseason would have turned into a big cycle of Tennessee rallying around him. Josh Heupel would have called him “our quarterback.” Some Vols fans would have started pining for a backup while others correctly pointed out they were crazy. Instead, the hype was there, and his agents or parents or whoever advises him bought it whole hog.
- I’m curious how much of this came from Iamaleava and how much came from his handlers. This doesn’t get a ton of attention, but there’s a weird dynamic with NIL where players start their NIL courtships as teenagers, when it makes sense for their parents to be heavily involved, then end their NIL years as full-fledged adults, people who should be responsible for their own business decisions. In between, a handoff has to happen. I wonder how much it does, and I wonder how much it gets intercepted by agents.
- Agents are a huge problem. They’re harassing kids with sales pitches. They’re charging commissions that would never fly in pro sports. Again, this doesn’t get as much attention as it should. Even in the NIT, it made some players miserable. Guys were rewarded for their breakouts with dozens if not hundreds of Instagram DM’s from con men.
- I wonder how much of the NIL problem could be solved if a few of the reputable agents got together and colluded on some industry standards. Cap commissions, agree on some tampering rules, create some organization that gives agents black-and-white membership under these standards, then bring that to athletes and parents and schools and start boxing out the worst actors.
- All of that said, Iamaleava should have either quit in January or gone to practice and meetings yesterday. Any kid knows that that’s what you do. You’d hope 20-year-olds do too.
- If the report is true that Iamaleava’s camp contacted Oregon and Oregon said “lol no,” that is very funny. It’s not like Dante Moore’s a sure thing. But for the same reason you shouldn’t date someone who got divorced because they cheated on their spouse, it’s probably not a great idea to get in bed with Nico Iamaleava’s representation.
- Good for Tennessee for not playing ball. Contracts have to be contracts. You cannot start letting contracts not be contracts. Especially when there isn’t a salary cap.
- This is gonna start a QB transfer chain in the spring window, isn’t it? Maybe broader mayhem? Seems like either 1) Tennessee’s going to poach someone’s starter and that someone will poach someone else’s starter and we’ll get a visual food chain OR 2) a bunch of backups will jump into the portal angling for the Tennessee job (or another one on the food chain) and it’ll become a free-for-all. Maybe both will happen. Not fun! I choose to blame the agents. I suggest schools and the NCAA start scapegoating them too. I don’t get why everyone isn’t blaming the agents here. They’re so easy to blame. They’re faceless. They’re lawyers. A decent number are straight-up criminals. Even if I was an agent, I’d be blaming the agent. Throw out some wild accusations. Make yourself look like Mister Rogers.
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