Prominent college football coach responds to crazy rumor about former Tennessee Vols QB Nico Iamaleava
It's been a wild week for the Tennessee Vols football program. The week started with the expectation that Nico Iamaleava would take the field as Tennessee's starting quarterback on Saturday at the program's annual Orange and White game. Instead, Iamaleava and Tennessee parted ways after a report emerged that the former five-star recruit was in […]
It's been a wild week for the Tennessee Vols football program.
The week started with the expectation that Nico Iamaleava would take the field as Tennessee's starting quarterback on Saturday at the program's annual Orange and White game.
Instead, Iamaleava and Tennessee parted ways after a report emerged that the former five-star recruit was in negotiations for a new NIL deal with the Volunteers (Iamaleava didn't attend UT's practice on Friday, the day before the spring game, which led to the parting of ways).
Because college football operates in secrecy behind the scenes, there are a lot of unverified rumors and reports with anonymous sources about the entire situation. Essentially, you can believe what you want to believe because there are very few on-the-record facts out there.
Anyway, one of the unverified rumors that's floating around is that Oregon Ducks head coach Dan Lanning called up Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel this week to tell him that Iamaleava's agent was "shopping him" to west coast schools.
Lanning was asked about that rumor on Saturday. And unsurprisingly, Lanning declined to address the rumor.
"I'm not getting into anything else, but let's talk about (Oregon's) scrimmage today," said Lanning with a bit of a smile. "The Ducks worked really hard at the scrimmage today."
There's no much to glean from that answer from Lanning. Some might view the fact that he didn't deny the rumor as confirmation that it's true, but I don't think that's quite fair considering most college coaches dance around questions without giving legitimate answers.
The truth is that we will likely never know if Lanning had any communication with Heupel about the Iamaleava situation unless someone goes on the record. Which, again, is unlikely.
