Randy Peterson
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April 17, 2025
We’ve made fun of former Tennessee quarterback Nico Iamaleava’s failedattempt in using the transfer portal as a means to chase more NIL money. Actually, it’s a sad testament of what will keep happening.
Bad-actor agents. Pushy parents. Greedy friends also seeking a piece of the action. They’re as prevalent these days, as those scam text messages saying you’ve got an overdue toll road bill, when, in fact, toll roads don’t exist in the state in which you live.
Iamaleava’s supposedly had plenty of people in his inner circle, but were any of them looking out for his best interests? Did anyone suggest tapping the brakes on trying to hold the Vols financially hostage for a ransom of an additional couple million dollars?
I don’t feel sorry for the mid-guided redshirt freshman who was good (not great) last season. He’ll be fine. UCLA or someone will promise an NIL package that could reach $2 million – less than he made at Tennessee. Maybe Iamaleava will even play in the pros in a few years.
He’ll come out of this OK, but what happens to the next star athlete who tries this? What happens if they’re not as fortunate? The transfer portal doesn’t guarantee success. Most times, it shows what can happen when star athletes surround themselves with the wrong people. How many Iowa State football players, for example, financially bettered themselves elsewhere? Maybe just a handful. Maybe.
Iamaleava gave up maybe $2.5 million to run it over again with a Tennessee powerhouse that made the 2025 College Football Playoffs, for less money at (let’s assume) a UCLA program that wasn’t good enough to make a bowl game.
Lesson learned? I hope so, and in this respect, I’ll repeat what I most recently wrote just a few days ago.
College athletes and universities must have binding contracts in a few months, when schools legally start paying players. Both sides must cover their backsides – kind of like the contracts that coaches sign.
And yes, this includes buyouts, wording that prohibits opting out from regular and postseason games unless told to do so by team doctors, and words that demand academic progress.
If this includes being an employee of the University, and the unionization that could accompany it – then college athletics just became more complicated.
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I’ve read where powerful people wouldn’t be against increasing the NCAA Tournament to 70-something (or even more) teams. Hell, why stop there. Let’s shoot for the moon:
Let’s go with 100 – and the Missouri Valley Conference still gets just one team.
Our power conference commissioners already have proven know nothing about geography, or when enough is enough, and if you don’t believe it, just look around.
The SEC has 16 teams. The Big Ten has 18. The Big 12 has 16. The ACC is at 17. Not only do names of their conference make no sense, but neither do their constant additions.
And now, you’re going to hear talk about tinkering with what has been the most wonderful NCAA-sponsored postseason event of them all.
I thought of that while watching the NCAA Tournament. I thought of it while locked into the multi-screen function – with one game on the left another on the right, and the stats function wearing out my clicking thumb.
And in this age of reading politics into everything – who was on my screen’s left, and who was on the right meant absolutely nothing. As long as the “Signal” was strong.
If I could have figured a way to get a third picture-in-a-picture, it’d have been on my Yankees.
And this just in:
Vice-President J.D. Vance and his wife have returned from Greenland, where they were on a fact-finding mission to see if it would be beneficial for the United State to purchase that country.
I can see it now, a commissioner announcing the University of Greenland has been added to their conference. In this age, don’t bet against it.
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It’s none of my business, but . . .
Like you, I’ve got a problem with Colorado deciding to immediately retire the jerseys of Travis Hunter and Shedeur Sanders, the coachers’ son. Sure, they’re great two-and-done players and Top 10 picks in the Thursday April 24 NFL Draft, but it seems disrespectful as all get out, to past Buffaloes stars (not coached by Deion Sanders), whose jerseys are not retired.
No one has a problem with them being honored, but budging the line – ahead of such past Colorado greats Kordell Stewart, Cliff Branch,Michael Westbrook, Eric Bieniemy, and Darian Hagan?
Obviously, the Buffs are doing this because their flamboyant (and pretty darn good) head coach wants to.
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And finally . . .
Hunter says he’ll quit college football, if forced to play just one position. Yeah, right. And my daughters are opening a lakeside pizza restaurant that my granddaughter will manage.
I’ll take a medium (Graziano) sausage and extra mushroom pizza, please, and a Bud Lite while I wait.
(Award-winning columnist Randy Peterson can be, and has been, reached at randypete4846@gmail.com or at any Okoboji-area beverage/food establishment between the hours of open and close.)