I, I, people got really worked up over
it, and I understand this. We had our
first college football holdout, uh, with Niko Yamalava
, uh, a really talented kid. He was
number 2, I think, in his recruiting class
too. Arch Manning, tall, moves, got
a whip, you know, he's young, needs
to be refined. Uh, and so basically,
Tennessee said, Listen, kid, we paid you
$2.5 million a red shirt. We weren't, you
know. I, I know it's easy to blame
the kid. But when people get leverage, employees
, and that's what college football players are, uh
, people use it, and I blame the NCAA
for playing catch up on this NIL and transfer portal
for 4 years. First of all, let's start
with this, because let's spend some time on this
. What was your initial reaction? What were you
mad at or who, who was to blame here
? Uh, the void, the void in a
lack of enforcement, that's, that's who to blame
. I think it's, it's really easy to just
immediately jump on Niko Iyamalaava. I think it's easy
to take Tennessee's side right away, and I'm not
saying that, that he's right and they're wrong.
I just think that what's that, what's, what's
bigger than this situation is this void of enforcement and
the, the That void is what has created this
problem. It's, it's, it's eerily similar,
by the way, eerily similar to, do you
remember after the'94 baseball strike, Colin and baseball
turned a blind eye to the steroid era because it
brought the fans back and then all of a sudden
there was a problem, you know, and,
and the NCAA basically. You know, abdicated their
responsibility to govern the sport and, and to be
fair to them, they were forced into that situation
because of, you know, um litigation, and
, and the courts basically told them they had no
jurisdiction. Well, with no jurisdiction, there are
, there are no ways to enforce rules. Once
there's no way to enforce rules, now it is
, it's a total free for all. What's what's
fascinating in this instance is that part of his recruitment
, Nico's recruitment, um, was brought as an
infraction to the NCAA, and Tennessee fought it tooth
and nail and actually sued the NCAA, and,
and that lawsuit is what led to almost directly a
memo being sent to the member institutions of the NCAA
that said verbatim, basically, we no longer will
enforce anything around NIL. So Tennessee created the vacuum
and is now crying foul when that vacuum is being
exploited by one of the players that play on their
team. That's, so that that's just like a
little bit of a like a backstory, which I
think is fascinating. And again, this is not
, he's right, they're wrong. This is more
about the fact that there's, there's very little rules
, there's very little enforcement, if any, and
, and. That's really the problem here. These
are growing pains for what will eventually be a system
that has a better system of guardrails and rules that
everyone agrees upon, basically mutually agreed upon rules between
the players and the stakeholders that then they can move
forward with. And then the, the, not
the last thing, but I do want to finish
with this on this answer. It's never exactly what
we're hearing. Colin, this is, I,
I do not believe that Niko Yamalayava walked out on
a Friday. Because he wanted 1.5 million more dollars
. I don't think that that's the case. I
think that there's more at play. I have heard
that he and his people wanted the offense to grow
and change a little bit because that offense in its
inception, that's, that's the Art Briles old Baylor
offense, and no quarterback has really succeeded going from
that offense to the. National Football League. It's
, it's, and, and we see this,
by the way, in big moments that Tennessee has
in big games, is that their passing attack,
which is so prolific at times, really goes away
. And we saw that, you know, even
back with, with Hendon Hooker and others. And
so he wanted it to, to grow and to
change and through spring football apparently that didn't. I
think he's also being given some bad advice by people
around him. So there's a lot at play here
, and, and I don't think it's just this
narrative that it's one greedy player and he held out
for this specific amount and then this, this school
and good for them, they said no. I
, I don't think that that's the entire story.
Yeah, for the record.