Sad News From Tennessee Volunteers the number one key player has resigned today due to…….
The NCAA investigation into Tennessee’s Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) activity reportedly involves multiple sports, but according to multiple reports one of the main focuses of the inquiry is on Nico Iamaleava, the redshirt freshman quarterback for the Vols.
The former five-star prospect, the No. 2-ranked player in the country in the 2023 recruiting according to 247Sports who committed to Tennessee in March 2022, is alleged to have been the blue-chip prospect to receive one of the first high-profile and lucrative NIL deals after NIL entered college sports in July 2021. Tom Mars, a prominent college sports attorney who has been working for Spyre Sports – who oversees the Volunteer Club, Tennessee’s primary NIL collective – on Tuesday night released a statement regarding its NIL deal with Iamaleava.
Mars has a long history of representing student-athletes and schools in NCAA legislative matters, working with a handful of transfers in eligibility battles and most recently represented now-former Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh in his NCAA infractions case(s).
The Arkansas-based attorney has been working with Spyre since at least last June, and his statement regarding Iamaleava comes in response to multiple reports linking him to the NCAA’s investigation into Tennessee’s NIL activity.
Here is the s
tatement from Mars in full as published on social media:
In early 2022, independent of the University of Tennessee or anyone associated with its athletics program, Spyre Sports entered into a mutually beneficial contractual relationship with Nico Iamaleava that involved a limited assignment of his NIL rights, no matter which school he chose to attend. Such “representation agreements” have become increasingly common. The parties agreed that their contractual rights and obligations would be governed by California law, which freely allows prospective college athletes to enter into such agreements.
The commercial reasonableness of the agreement between Spyre and Nico was evidenced by a recitation that Spyre anticipated Nico would eventually be drafted by an NFL team. The agreement also specifically acknowledged the restrictions prohibiting the use of any school’s or team’s “logo or insignia.”
The agreement required Spyre to protect the value of Nico’s NIL rights and specifically stated that “nothing in [the] agreement constitutes any form of inducement to ATHLETE to enroll at any school and/or join any athletic team.
In short, the agreement was fully consistent with existing NCAA NIL “guidelines” and had nothing to do with recruiting Nico to the University of Tennessee or any other school.
Spyre Sports and the Vol Club currently represent more than 100 college athletes and are proud to have helped them maximize the value of their legally protected name, image and likeness.
Sports Illustrated first reported that the NCAA was looking to dig up dirt on Tennessee and referenced Iamaleava, but ensuing reports were more firm in detailing his involvement.
After CBS Sports reported that inquiry “centers” on Iamaleava’s NIL deal, the New York Times reported the probe focuses on the use of a private plane by a “so-called donor collective” to fly Iamaleava to campus while he was a recruit. Nearly a year after NIL began, the NCAA told members that using NIL as an inducement to recruits violated its rules.
The NCAA more recently indicated it planned to be more aggressive in retroactively investigating and punishing NIL violations and took steps to lower its burden of proof in those cases.
Tennessee chancellor Donde Plowman sent a bold letter rebuking the NCAA and president Charlie Baker for its aim and approach in investigating NIL activity when the rules over NIL have been, in Baker’s own words, “inconsistent and unclear” with “the ambiguity [filling] schools, student-athletes, and collectives with uncertainty about how to follow the rules.”
In the letter, Plowman rips the NCAA for “trying to bully institutions back to a time” when it controlled compensation for student-athletes, control the governing body lost when the Supreme Court ruled against it in the groundbreaking Alston case.
“What I don’t think the NCAA has embraced to date,” Plowman writes, “is how the actions of the enforcement staff in pursuing NIL enforcement is a continuation of the resistance to compensating student-athletes a predisposition that led to the Alston decision and all the other lawsuits now facing the NCAA.”
Tennessee is the latest school the NCAA has put in its crosshairs trying to legislate NIL retroactively. Florida State football and Miami women’s basketball were hit with sanctions for NIL violations. The NCAA also has been investigating Florida’s football program looking for similar missteps.
The situation with Tennessee is complicated by the Vols just concluding an NCAA case last summer. The program avoided a postseason ban after the former coaching staff was found to have committed 18 major violations between 2018 and 2020. Tennessee was hit with a significant fine, recruiting restrictions and scholarship reductions, but the NCAA commended Tennessee for its handling of the case, from initiating an internal investigation and quickly dismissing the offending parties to looping the NCAA into its own inquiry.
Plowman argues Tennessee “complied with interim NIL policy and guidance” from the NCAA, and her letter states “neither the collective nor student-athletes broke any rule or guidance document as they existed at the time any actions were taken.
Tennessee is yet to receive a formal Notice of Allegations from the NCAA.
