The Joel Klatt Show: A College Football Podcast - Tennessee takes a stand: is NIL out of control?

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

FOX Sports’ lead College Football analyst Joel Klatt breaks down Tennessee starting QB Nico Iamaleava’s decision to enter the Transfer Portal after reportedly attempting to re-negotiate his NIL package to $4 million for next season. Klatt lays out why we shouldn’t be surprised that this is happening or that a football program is trying to take a stand in the NIL landscape after the pendulum had swung heavily in favor of the players. He explains why this situation is reminiscent of coaches negotiating larger and larger salaries except for one key difference. He also provides the fix to keep situations like this from getting out of control. Klatt wraps up the show by marveling at the final round of The Masters and Rory McIlroy’s dramatic win to complete the career Grand Slam. 0:00-1:48 Intro 1:49-8:09 Nico Iamaleava plans to enter the transfer portal after attempting to renegotiate NIL deal 8:10-18:09 Will we see more “hold-outs” in college football going forward? 18:10-21:09 What changes are needed for NIL to work better in today’s college football landscape? 21:10-25:24 Is NIL to blame for the current issues in the sport? 25:25-33:02 Masters recap Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nico Iomaleava, I do not think, is the villain that everyone wants to make him out to be. NIL is not ruining college football. The transfer portal is not ruining college football. What is deteriorating the sport is the lack of enforcement that is going on. College football has never been better. Interest has never been higher. Believe that we are at the dawn of the golden age of college football. Hey, welcome into the program.

This is Joel Klatt show. I am Joel Klatt. This show, as always, is brought. to you by Hampton by Hilton. We thank them for their support as always. Hey, appreciate you joining us here. And by the way, we've got now a show and a topic that's just all college football. So let's put the draft aside for a moment. And we got to dive into some college football topics before we get back into the draft here later this week and into next week before I head out to Green Bay. Now, before we do that, and before I get into this Tennessee issue and Niko I'm going to

talk at length about it. But first, make sure you go to subscribe. on the YouTube channel. You can hit the notification button. Make sure that you know exactly when any of our content is dropping. You'll be there. You can leave a comment as well. You can get down in there and I'll try to join in some of those conversations. Follow us wherever you like to social media. We're there all over the place. Agile Clashio is where you can find us in all of our content lives there and shorter little snippets. And our staff does a wonderful job. You guys do an incredible job. Let's dive into it. Let's jump into this. I got to tell you, I was a little bit excited. It's not necessarily a topic that gets people excited.

In fact, it gets people frustrated. But I'm actually excited to talk about this Tennessee issue, this Nico Iomaleava issue. If you have not heard Nico Iomaleava, the starting quarterback for the Tennessee volunteers, who led them to the college football playoff before they got bounced by the Death Star Supernova, Ohio State, Buckeyes in that game in Columbus, Nico now play. plans to enter the portal in this spring portal session after reportedly asking for $4 million in NIL next season. Now, if you will remember, Nico was at the center of what at the time sounded like an outlandish NIL package when he decided to commit to and enrolled at Tennessee,

which was a package that was somewhere in the neighborhood of $8 to $9 million over the course of his tenure in Knoxville, so around two, two and a half per year. So everyone's starting to say like, oh, I guess the two, two and a half is not enough for Nico and he wants four and holding him over a barrel. And that's at least the narrative that has been pushed to this point. Now, I will just say this. It's never exactly how it's reported. Okay. So something deeper is going on right now. Niko Iomaleava, I do not think, is the villain that everyone wants to make him out to be. I believe that there are other factors at play other than just the reported request for an extra couple of million dollars in NIL. Okay.

That being said, though, that's kind of the information that is out there. And so it begins a much larger conversation about the era that we're in in college football. And a lot of people have gone immediately to this disgust button and this idea like, oh, it's broken and, oh, man, this sucks. And oh, it's ruined. And all of these types of emotions, these negative emotions about this circumstance. And I'm actually here to tell you, like, I'm not going to be negative about this. In fact, I view this, this situation that we're in right now with Tennessee, with NICO,

with what's going on as growing pains. I think that these are growing pains. That doesn't mean that they don't hurt. And it doesn't mean that it's unpleasant or not unpleasant. It just means that you're going to have to go through some of this pain in order to get to a different place. And in this case, I'm talking about college football writ large here overarching from a global perspective. I believe that college football is going to have to go through some of these growing pains. Tennessee is going to have to go through some of these growing pains in order to be in a better spot moving

forward. Okay. So that's kind of the overarching umbrella that I wanted to lay over this discussion before I get into all of these points. And I think that you hear it in my voice. I really enjoy talking about things like this. Others don't. And that's fine. That's fine. They believe that this is the end of college football. I believe that it is the beginning of college football. It is a birth into a place where we're at the dawn of the golden age of college football, which you've heard me say time and time again. So these growing pains, what's going on with these growing pains? How can we get over them? What's going on in this specific situation? I'll try to get to all of those things right now. Okay. So first things first, this is not a surprise. In fact, the only thing that's surprising about this situation is that it took this long to get to this point.

because let's start with this. The majority of players transferring in the spring window, the overwhelming majority, are in an NIL dispute or chasing an NIL bag. The other section of players that are transferring in the spring transfer portal window just lost a playing competition, a starting competition, a playing time competition. because as Nick Saban told us on his way out the door, players are concerned with two things and really only two things.

And they relate their value and how much money they're making. Their value is tied to how much they play. So if you remember Nick Sabin's quote when he kind of left the building, if you will, he said maybe 70 or 80% of the players you talk to, all they want to know is two things. What assurances do I have that I'm going to play and how much are you going to pay me. And again, they're in that order because they are tied. In order to make money, you've got to play. In order to play, you've got to have assurances that you will play.

So really, there's only two reasons that you're transferring in the spring portal window. You just lost a battle, which is going to limit your playing time, which is going to limit your value, or you feel like you've exceeded your value and you're going to go out and get that value on, quote, the open market. Okay. So that's where we're at right now. And what's unique about this is that a team finally said no. Okay, so this has been going on. There have been players that have gone back in to schools and said, hey, listen, I think that I deserve more money, or there's been some dispute about their NIL. And in this case, Josh Heipel said no.

And he said that when addressing this situation. There's no player that's bigger than the power T, and that includes me. Today, you got to see 110 guys that ran out and competed their butts off, that give their all for Tennessee and do it the right way. Okay. Now, he's got to say that. And in this case, they held their ground. It's not the first time that a school has held their ground. It's just the first time that you've heard about it because it's the first time that the player then also held his ground.

This is just the first time that it's come to a head. This is not a unique situation in that a player in the spring portal window, even a star player, and I'm telling you at some prominent programs that have gone in and said, listen, I want more money. And then the school says no. And then the player says, okay, I'll stay here. It's just the first time that both of them drew a line in the sand and then held themselves to those lines. And I'm kind of proud of Tennessee in this case. And you know what?

If you're Nico, this is totally within. his rights. Now again, again, I have heard that it wasn't just about money. Now, that's the story that's going to be pushed and largely it's going to be the story that lands because Nico himself is just a one-man band in this story, whereas the entire apparatus of Tennessee, the entire apparatus of what they do from a communication standpoint, from a fan standpoint is going to be against this one individual where now he doesn't even have a team, at least at the time that I'm taping this, and this is Sunday night after the Masters. So this is going to land, and it's going to be a story that is driven by this narrative that

Nico was greedy, wanted more money. Tennessee is the heroes in the story, and they said no, and we're just going to go from here. When, in actuality, like one, this is totally within Nico's rights because there are no rules. And he held his ground as well, which tells you that it's not just about money that there's more at play. Now, if we just move on from here, what does this tell you about the entire situation that we're in? Okay. And this doesn't even really have to do with specifically Tennessee or specifically Niko Iamaleava. We are in a situation where there's a complete void in terms of the enforcement of rules, okay? Largely because the NCAA is completely inept, completely inept, and egregiously

absurd in terms of the brutal nature with which they've governed our sport. They have totally failed. They buried their heads in the sand and wanted to retain a model that was archaic until it was essentially litigated against them and then handed down from the bench that they change. And so the courts totally neutered the NCAA from their ability to go and enforce rules that were on the books about boosters and pay for play and all sorts of different things. So now all of a sudden you have to do NIL because you're forced to do it. You've got to allow for free movement in the transfer portal because you're forced to do it from the bench because of the litigious nature of what happens. throughout, you know, really the back end of 2010, 11, and further, and they just lost every

one of these cases. And now you end up in a void. It just so happens that, and this is the interesting part in this specific case, is that Tennessee created this void because the NCAA tried to enforce some rules on Tennessee, some perceived infractions surrounding, actually, Nico Iamaleava, his recruitment and his NIL package, and others. And Tennessee said, hey, pound sand, you can't enforce these rules at all. Absolutely not. You have no jurisdiction. We're going to sue you. We're going to fight this. And the NCAA, because, again, they've been totally neutered by the courts, threw up their hands,

and sent a memo, excuse me, to the entire membership, all the institutions out there, and basically said, hey, we're no longer going to enforce anything related to NIL. So Tennessee's pushback against the NCAA created the void that now is being exploited in this specific situation, which I do find a little bit interesting. They kind of had a hand in where we're at and now where they are at. Okay. Players want their value and they want to wield the leverage in order to maximize that value and then ultimately get it on the market via the transfer portal, whether it's the winter transfer portal or the spring transfer portal. And here's what I would tell players is that, yes, you want leverage, but they want the leverage all the time. with no cost.

And you've got to be careful what you wish for if you're a player and you're just fighting this fight because the pendulum has swung so far back to the players that we have to understand that there will be a reaction and it will swing back towards the schools at some point. And you know what? Maybe this is an inflection point of that. Because again, it does seem or feel there is a narrative that this is the first time that a school is kind of pushing back towards the, quote, greedy player.

and now all of a sudden, you know, the free market is working this out and programs are going to finally say no. But what the players should actually be more leery of is not a no. But if a player can go out there and say, I've outperformed my value, then they should be at least aware, and they should be very leery of a situation where a program can say you have underperformed your value and your services are no longer needed. I don't want to get into a situation like that, and the players don't either. But the more you try to retain that end of the pendulum, where you have all of this leverage and you try to exercise all of this leverage, you have to understand that you're exercising

that leverage. And at some point, there will be a cost of that. And there will be a swingback of that. So that's what the players, I think, are going to have to at least be cognizant of here in the coming months and years as we get more into this situation where we're going going to have revenue sharing. I do also believe, just a quick aside, that this transfer portal window is going to be more wild than maybe the future ones because revenue sharing is coming this summer. And right now, this seems like a moment in time in which these players are like,

hey, this is my one last chance to get some ridiculous deal that's outside of what can be considered a more structured revenue sharing deal through the school. Okay. So there's this idea that the programs are taking back the power, the pendulum might be swinging back towards the school and the program rather than where it's been sitting over the last couple of years, which is clearly in the player's side. Truth be told, we've seen this time and time again. We've seen this actually for years, and it didn't have NIL attached to it, and it didn't have transfer portal attached to it. We've seen coaches wield this leverage over their programs and their fan bases for years. This emotional leverage that they have that they use when a prominent opening occurs

throughout the country. And coaches have used this, man. They have used this. And they have generated millions and millions and millions of dollars because of it. If you go back to where coaching salaries were just 10, 20 years ago, and what's happened to those coaching salaries, here's what you'll start to learn, is that the agents in this business started to understand that athletic directors were going to make emotional decisions. So all those agents needed was one prominent opening out there. So LSU comes open or you name the school, Michigan comes open or whomever the opening is at, USC or any of these schools. And then every agent would run his client to their AD and say, you know, that school really wants your coach.

You should pay him a lot more money. You should pay him a lot more money. So coaches have been doing this for years. And if I'm saying good on Tennessee for saying no and holding the line, here's what I would tell you. I've been begging programs and athletic directors for years to tell a coach no. I mean, I'll bring up some specifics, the risk of alienating individuals. When Jimbo Fisher holds Texas A&M over the coals because LSU is open to the tune of, what was it, $90 plus million, that's ridiculous.

Like at some point someone needed to say, no, go ahead, go ahead. You know, this happened with Mel Tucker at Michigan State. And listen, there's countless other guys. And you've got to give credit to Tennessee in this point. this case because they at least held the line. I've been asking teams and, or I should say programs and athletic departments and athletic directors, I've been begging, hold the line, tell a coach pound sand, go ahead, go negotiate, go try to get a better deal. But the emotional nature with which ADs approached those decisions made them captive to their coaches. And because

of that coaches made millions and millions and millions of dollars. And now that players are doing it, I don't want to hear any of your crocodile tears from a coaching perspective. I mean, Josh Hyple has coached everywhere. So don't tell me it's just about Tennessee. It's like, bro, you played at Oklahoma and you've coached at 18 different places. Okay. So it is what it is. And let's just call a spade a spade. Loyalty is not what it used to be, which is fine to a point as long as we're not creating this false narrative that one side is always loyal and another side always isn't. Because that's not the case. That's just not the case. What is the case is that the formation and the construction of these athletic departments is going to have to start to change.

It can't just be athletic directors making decisions and choices and valuations of their head coach. It has to be also a GM. It's got to be that same GM and maybe a personnel department, that is making evaluations and valuations of players. And I think both of those things have to be accurate. You've got to understand what a player can do for you and what that value is to your program so that when the player comes to you, you can draw a line and say, I'm sorry,

like, we're not going to go there. We're not going to go there because a coach could make an emotional decision. An AD could make an emotional decision. But when you start to get these personnel departments, now you can run more efficiently. And maybe this is the start. of this. This is the start of this. And this is the way forward. Again, growing pains, growing pains to get to a place where every program can operate, I think, cleaner and in a

better fashion. And then maybe we can get to a point where the structure of college football is not operating in a void of enforcement. NIL is not ruining college football. The transfer portal is not ruining college football. That's absurd. And it's a lazy argument if you're using that. What is deteriorating the sport is the lack of enforcement that is going on. It is the void in enforcement going on. It's the fact that the NCAA has not upheld their end of the bargain. And really, folks, I hate to be this simplistic about it, but there's really a simple answer

towards this. A mutually agreed upon set of rules between all the parties at play that then is enforced. I know. I know that sounds wild. I know that sounds. I mean, wait a second, Joel, you mean to tell me, it's that simple. Yes, it's that simple. It really is. Now, The answer is simple. The construction of how that happens is what's going to be difficult. Getting to those mutually agreed upon rules is difficult. Why? Because in intercollegiate athletics, there's way too many cooks in the kitchen.

There's way too many people with a say. You've got chancellors with a say and presidents with a say and commissioners with a say and so many different people in the room talking about all of these different things. And it's really difficult. And you used to have Mark and Mert in the mountain of people at the NCAA that they got to hire off the billions of dollars that they got from their television rights deal through March Madness. And you had all of these, quote, stakeholders, which is what they wanted to call themselves in the room. And so change was incredibly difficult.

It was worse than trying to turn the Titanic. There were icebergs all over the place. and that ship just sailed straight dead ahead. We didn't turn. We didn't turn at all. There wasn't anybody on watch. No one turned starboard, whatever direction that is. No, no, no, no. We just plowed straight ahead right over icebergs. We're like, what was that? Hey, what did you guys? Hey, did you guys feel that? Sure did. We sure did. Why? Because there were a thousand people with their hands on the steering wheel all pulling in different directions. Okay, why do I bring that up? I bring that up because I'm going to go back to an argument that I've made that I will stand by,

and that is power, in particular in college football, needs to be wielded by fewer individuals so that it can be more nimble and that we can actually change and create systems that will govern. us into the future. You see, when there's a thousand people with their hands on the steering wheel, we don't turn at all. In fact, we just run over iceberg, over iceberg, over iceberg, and we get to a situation where the entire hole is filled with water and it feels like we're sinking. So what do we need? We need a more nimble apparatus. We have to create a system where there's fewer people that actually have power so that that power can move us in directions that's beneficial for everybody. And I think that that can happen. And I think that the instance that we have

with Tennessee, with Nico Iomaleava, the more things like this that happen, the more that the powers that be and the fewer people that really should be in power, they're going to look at this and be like, this is not good for our sport. Let's create a different type of system. Maybe it will allow Congress to finally look at this and be like, okay, we need to put an umbrella over college football so that they can move forward with some set of rules that allow them to govern themselves. And this is why I've argued that, sorry, the SEC and the Big Ten actually garnering more power is actually better for the health of college football moving forward because the old system

was not working. And you could say, hey, Joel, you know, you're full of it, and you can scream and you can yell and you can shout. But I do know this. The old system was not working. And it had no solutions whatsoever. The old system threw a white flag in the air and said, we will no longer enforce any rule as it relates to the NIL dealings that your institution has with players. That's the old system. And the old system sucks. And we need something different.

There does need to be a mutually agreed upon set of rules that we can move forward with that is enforced. And in order to do that, we need fewer people making decisions and we need fewer people in power. So the SEC and the Big Ten, garnering more power is actually a good thing. It makes the sport more nimble because what they agree upon becomes what the sport agrees upon. So now it's not a thousand people with their hands on the steering wheel. It's really more like 10. And I'm going to take my chances getting 10 people to agree on turning the ship in one. direction versus a thousand. I hope you stayed with me for that entire analogy, but that's,

that's really, that's really where we're at. That's really where we're at. So you can yell and scream and you can call Nico EMI IA ava greedy. You can say that NIL is breaking or ruining college football. You can say that the transfer portal is ruining college football, but it's not. None of those things are actually true. There's much more at play as there always is. And I believe that instances like this will move us forward into a system that has better guardrails and has better rules so that movement is restricted for players and yet they can go and get their complete value as it relates to their value as a player or their name,

image, and likeness off the field. All of those things can still happen and will happen. and will happen. And at that point, I think teams, players, programs, fans, all of us will be in a much better place. Quickly before I actually get out of here, I did want to just say, I'm wearing my master's hat. So, as you know, I love golf. Love golf. I actually just started a golf YouTube channel. It's called 3 and 2 golf. I'm doing it with Shane Bacon, having an amazing time.

We're going around playing different clubs, club champions. They're champions of their clubs and we're just playing them in two v2 matches. It's really a cool deal. But that Masters was some of the best television that I've, as a sports fan, seen in a long time and as a golf fan. That's some of the most riveting golf television that I've seen since Tiger Woods in 2019 go and win the Masters. I remember they had the rain coming in the afternoon. So they played an early morning round in 2019. And so I woke up my kids in order for them to see the history of Tiger Woods win the Masters tournament.

And I did not a similar thing because I didn't have to wake them up early. But I wanted my kids around me, my sons, Henry, Sam and Theo. Henry's 13. Sam just turned 11. Happy birthday, buddy. I love you. And Theo is eight. And I wanted them around me to watch Rory McElroy win a career grand slam.

Like, that doesn't happen. Sixth guy in history to win the career grand slam. that was riveting television. That was, oh my gosh. And the roller coaster ride of that entire round, if you're like me and you love golf and, you know, you sit there and Rory McElroy has a two-shot lead and he opens up with a double bogey with his history of what happened last year at Pinehurst.

And I'm thinking to myself, oh my gosh, he's going to choke. This isn't going to go well at all. And then he's able to bounce back after he loses the lead. And then he goes on a run. And then he dunks it in the water on 13. I'm like, oh, my gosh, this is incredible. It was such a roller coaster ride. It was an emotional watch the entire day.

It's kind of pulling this guy to the finish line. That was incredible. That was incredible. A few thoughts on this. One is, I do have to say, doesn't it make us all appreciate, or it should make us all appreciate, Tiger, Woods a little bit more. He never did that to us.

I can't remember. I mean, like, the guy was rock solid. You know, Rory is hitting gap wedges into the creek on the 13th hole, which is bonanas. He's bogeing the 18th in order to go to the playoff. I know Tiger bogeed the 18th to go to a playoff with Chris DeMarco in 2005, but like, man, Tiger was so consistent and he hit the shot, the right shot all the time. And Rory was taking us on this emotional roller coaster and then he goes down to his knees after he wins it and the outpouring of emotion.

That was some pretty incredible stuff. I've got to say, like I said, I'm a sports fan first and foremost. I really do love golf. And I know a lot of you love golf as well. But Rory winning that tournament, like that was really special to watch. When you're watching something that has only happened six times in history, that's really cool. I don't care if some people don't like more Rory McElroy or if they do like Rory Mackerel or whatever. Like history is history.

And so witnessing that was incredible. And then I was watching some of the post round coverage. And then I heard this stat that he made 33s. he wrote a three on his scorecard 30 times during the course of a 72 whole event. He also made a couple of sevens, a couple of sixes. I tell you, man, it was just wildly inconsistent. First player ever with four double bogies and still win the tournament. That was some incredible stuff.

And I will say, isn't it something? And it doesn't matter the sporting event. It really doesn't. But isn't it something when you know you're watching. something special. When you know you're watching history, I've gotten this. I get this all the time. You know, when you watch the Olympics. I remember watching Messi win the World Cup. Like, things like that. It's just like, oh, my gosh, that's incredible. That is incredible stuff. I used to feel like that watching Michael Jordan. You just knew. You knew in the back of your mind.

Like, I'm watching something that's incredibly special. And I will tell you, if you're my age, I'm 43 years old. I mean, think, just think of how lucky we are. If you're anywhere near my age, think about how lucky we are. First, I grew up in Denver. I got to watch and root for my favorite athlete of all time, John Elway. John Elway is one of the best quarterbacks in the history of the sport. We also got to watch, like, the first, like, real superstar, dynamic, quarterback-driven team Joe Montana, like the first, like, real, like, goat.

So we get to see that, right? We're right on the tail end of Muhammad Ali, but we got to see Mike Tyson in his prime. We got to see Michael Jordan in his prime. We got to see Michael Phelps in his prime. We got to see Prime Tiger Woods. I mean, right when we, and again, I'm talking to all of you are in your mid-40s. Like, we have gotten to see it. Then we got to see LeBron James and Kobe Bryant.

And, I mean, think of everything we've gotten to see. And now we get to see Rory McElroy. And maybe he makes a run and gets to 10 majors. Maybe he becomes even a further legend after this Masters. But that's what I was thinking of, listening, watching, and enjoying that with my sons by my side. I'll always remember that Sunday. That was a very special Sunday. Hey, remember, I would really appreciate it if you would go and subscribe to our YouTube

channel. Thank you for those of you that have done that. I'm incredibly grateful. I would encourage you all to go follow us on social media, wherever you like to social media. If you like TikTok, we're there. You like Facebook, we're there, which means you're older than me. You like Instagram, we're there.

You like YouTube, X, we're there at Joel Clat Show. So go out there and follow us. Coming up later this week, I have a great conversation about the draft with the best draft analyst doing it. Daniel Jeremiah, he's going to join the Joel Clash show. We're going to go over all things NFL draft in that episode. I will have my final mock draft up a week from Monday. And so that'll be live going into the week of the draft as I head to Green Bay. and work the 2025 NFL draft.

I appreciate you guys being a part of this show. It was fun to talk college football. Even if it's about a subject that maybe some of you hate, I hope that now you think of NIL and you think of the transfer portal and just a little bit different light. Because remember, it's not always as it seems, and there's always going to be light at the end of the tunnel. We are headed to an era where this is going to get worked out,

and this is going to be incredible. That being said, have a wonderful night and we'll see you later in the week.