ESPN personality shares some reasonable thoughts on NCAA's Tennessee investigation
There have been plenty of opinions floating around about the NCAA investigation into the Tennessee Vols' NIL dealings. Some of those thoughts from national talking heads have focused on what kind of penalties Tennessee could be facing, instead of focusing on the absurdity of the investigation in general. The Vols, after all, are facing an […]
There have been plenty of opinions floating around about the NCAA investigation into the Tennessee Vols' NIL dealings.
Some of those thoughts from national talking heads have focused on what kind of penalties Tennessee could be facing, instead of focusing on the absurdity of the investigation in general.
The Vols, after all, are facing an investigation that centers on an alleged trip by quarterback Nico Iamaleava on a private jet for a recruiting trip. Meanwhile, the rest of college football is littered with seven-figure NIL deals that players are receiving for transferring to a new program.
It's probably the most frustrating part of the investigation for Tennessee fans — why come after the UT when the rest of the sport is openly paying players to play for programs?
As Tennessee Chancellor Donde Plowman wrote in her letter to NCAA president Charlie Baker, it's intellectually dishonest for the NCAA to take this approach.
ESPN College GameDay host Rece Davis, an Alabama graduate, shared some thoughts on the situation this week and he applied some logic to the situation, questioning why the NCAA is coming after Tennessee in this current college football climate.
"My knee-jerk reaction is that — and here's the caveat, if you show me something egregious and clearly against the written rules then I'm going to say so — but my knee-jerk reaction to this is why are you bothering with Tennessee on this," said Davis. "I mean, with everything going on around [college football], how is it that this has been deemed against the rules, if in fact it is, what some outlets have said, that it centers around a private jet for Nico Iamaleava. What's against the rules, what's not? Tennessee even went so far as to say in the response to the NCAA that 'we didn't violate any rules and you can't enforce some rule retroactively that wasn't against the rules then'. It seems sort of silly to me. I don't know why you (the NCAA) pick this particular story out."
This isn't a staunch defense of Tennessee by Davis. But at least he's asking the question that everyone seems to be wondering — why is the NCAA coming after Tennessee for an alleged violation that occurred nearly two years ago when NIL guidelines were even more non-existent than they are right now?
It's an incredibly unproductive approach by the NCAA. Instead of focusing on a way to push the sport forward, they're trying to retroactively punish Tennessee for something that's happening all across the sport right now.
I mean, we're living in a world where Georgia quarterback Carson Beck reportedly asked for "upward of $4 million" to return to Athens for the 2024 season and somehow this private jet usage from early 2022 is what the NCAA is focused on. It's completely absurd. And it's wild that national reporters like Pat Forde, Dan Wetzel, and others aren't more focused on the absurdity of it.
At least Rece Davis gets it.
One SEC game in 2024 just became personal for the Tennessee Vols
That’s gonna be a fun game
