Let me try to explain this is the simplest way possible, eliminating any pretense or pontificating.
A guy half the player of former Tennessee star quarterback Hendon Hooker is holding the Volunteers program hostage.
And now it’s time to cut him loose.
It’s time for Tennessee athletic director Danny White, one of the nation’s most proactive thinkers, to give coach Josh Heupel a contract extension to cut ties with quarterback Nico Iamaleava, who missed practice Friday while his representatives reportedly are trying to renegotiate his NIL deal.
Less than a week before the opening of the spring transfer portal.
Less than four months before the beginning of the 2025 season.
In other words, guess who have leverage? Guess who knows it, and is trying to force Tennessee to pay top dollar for a quarterback who in 2024 was barely among the upper half of the quarterbacks in the best conference in college football.
There's change on the horizon, all right. But not what you think.
This is the moment coaches and athletic directors and university presidents have been pointing to for the last four years. The one inflection point – in the middle of a tidal wave of change in college athletics since 2021 – that could redirect momentum.
White and Heupel should publicly stand together and declare no player will hold a program hostage. Not now, not ever.
The storied program of Gen. Neyland and Johnny Drum and Peyton and I Will Give My All For Tennessee Today won’t stand for this crap. And won’t give another penny to Iamaleava.
Or any other player, now or in the future, who pulls these 11th-hour hijinks.
