Josh Pate invites Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel to open college football’s Pandora’s Box, and no one would blame him if he did
Heupel likely won’t thumb his nose at the NCAA, but someone eventually will.
College football has evolved — or perhaps devolved is the better world here — into a pay for play world in today’s NIL and transfer portal eras. Call it NIL, but everybody knows what is really is beneath the surface.
And as the game has changed, so should have the enforcement mechanisms along the way. The NCAA should be trying to avoid situations like have been alleged by Clemson’s Dabo Swinney, who has lobbed public allegations against Ole Miss’s Pete Golding for poaching LB Luke Ferrelli, who transferred to Clemson from Cal last offseason before quickly pivoting to Oxford after being in Clemson for roughly a week. Those are the true injustices that we should be trying to avoid.
But the NCAA in its infinite wisdom feels it still needs to flex its muscles and try to remind everyone that it’s still relevant. Or that it believes that it is so, at least.
And that’s just what they did against Tennessee LB Arion Carter. Carter was suspended three games for accepting a $427 flight during the pre-NFL Draft process. He later returned to school and repaid the flight cost in full. But still, the NCAA dropped the hammer on Carter, although on appeal, the suspension was reduced to two games.
It should never have even been on the NCAA’s radar, which is something that talking head Josh Pate argued this week on his show. And Pate took it one step further — that Heupel should thumb his nose at the NCAA and play Carter anyways.
Josh Pate says Josh Heupel should play Tennessee LB Arion Carter despite two-game suspension by NCAA
“They’re still enforcing 1997 logic-based ruling in 2026,” Pate said. “What’s wild, and again, I’m about to speak in pure hypotheticals because there’s no way that the purely hypothetical scenario that I’m about to paint would ever happen. But if Arion Carter’s agent would have just gone and charged Tennessee a forty-thousand dollar consultation fee and then handed a lot of that money to Arion Carter, we’d be fine. Again, not that that ever happens in the real world, strictly hypothetical.
“But no no no. Instead, he bought the kid a four-hundred dollar — let’s round up to five-hundred, why not — bought the kid a five-hundred plane ticket. Prison. Or suspension. Whatever comes first.
“That’s why I can’t be a head coach. Because if I’m Josh Heupel, I don’t really care what my legal team tells me. I don’t care what my AD tells me. Truthfully, Danny White would probably be on board with me doing this. I’m like, ‘Arion, you’re in.’ Week 1. And see what happens.
“Because clearly, when you step to the podium and you talk that way about the governing body of the sport (using finger quotes), you don’t have any respect for them. No one has any respect for them.”
Heupel likely won’t follow suit, but we may not be far off from someone testing those waters
Of course, Pate is making reference to Heupel’s comments on Tuesday at his press conference, when Heupel criticized the NCAA’s ruling on Carter and called the ruling/suspension “bullshit”. And frankly, I have yet to read or hear a comment on social media or elsewhere from anybody who thinks it isn’t BS.
But it felt as though Heupel was putting it out there as his way of standing up for his player and protesting a dreadful decision by the NCAA. I find it hard to believe he would actually take that next step and give the proverbial finger to the organization by putting him on the field against Furman on September 5. It just doesn’t feel like his modus operandi.
That said, someone likely will at some point because universities and college athletes continue to test their boundaries month after month with new lawsuits and resulting rulings. From the Charles Bediako and Trinidad Chambliss cases (among many others) to the most recent ruling by US District Court Judge Charlotte Sweeney that opened the door for some class of 2022 players to return, the NCAA’s rules and its authority to enforce them is under constant stress.
I don’t think Tennessee will be the program to test them on the field like that. But make no mistake: that day is coming. And it will be a true crossroads for the NCAA and its future.
