The NCAA went after Tennessee and Nico Iamaleava. It backfired with earthshaking consequences

As chaos unfolds around the sport with skyrocketing money flowing in and a dizzying amount of player movement, the man unintentionally responsible for much of it prepares for a first-round playoff game.

Tennessee quarterback Nico Iamaleava didn’t set out to be the face of this new world of college football. Big in stature but soft-spoken in nature, the 6-foot-6, 215-pound redshirt freshman has tried to keep a low profile and rarely discusses off-field topics like name, image and likeness.

But that Iamaleava has No. 9 Tennessee readying to play No. 8 Ohio State Saturday night in Columbus is the result of a multi-party, all-out effort to protect him from NCAA enforcement. This effort ripped the shackles off anyone still trying to cling to amateurism within college athletics. 

“It created true above-the-board free agency in college football specifically but all of college athletics really,” said Mit Winter, a Kennyhertz Perry attorney specializing in NIL and working closely with collectives.

Tennessee knew the NCAA was coming after it. 

Before Iamaleava even began his true freshman season in 2023, the NCAA had set its sights on the relationship between Iamaleava and Spyre Sports, the Tennessee-affiliated NIL collective that had quickly earned a reputation as one of the best in the country. In a February 2022 Athletic story that served as a shot across the bow for many in the industry, Spyre Sports announced its bold intentions of raising $25 million annually to pay Tennessee athletes. Proverbial alarms went off in the NCAA’s Indianapolis offices. 

The crown jewel of Spyre’s early NIL efforts was Iamaleava, a five-star recruit from Long Beach, California, who Tennessee boosters hoped could elevate the Volunteers back to their 1990s heyday…

Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/the-ncaa-went-after-tennessee-and-nico-iamaleava-it-backfired-with-earthshaking-consequences/

Author : John Talty

Publish date : 2024-12-18 22:19:00

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