Urban Meyer crushes state of NIL: 'It's pay for play'

The storyline involving QB Nico Iamaleava has led to an all-new wave of criticism of name, image, and likeness in college sports. Urban Meyer, though, wishes we’d quit calling what it is right now as NIL.

Meyer, along with Mark Ingram II and Rob Stone, broke down Iamaleava’s departure from Tennessee on ‘The Triple Option’ on Wednesday. He said name, image, and likeness is just pay-for-play as it’s closer to an employee’s salary in its current state right now than what it was intended to be.

“A couple thoughts. One of the things, we’ve got to quit calling it NIL. It’s not. It’s pay for play,” Meyer said. “It’s a salary. It’s exactly what they’re doing in the NFL. It’s professional sports right now.”

Again, how and why Iamaleava left Rocky Top has led to backlash against the player and, with that, backlash against the system set up currently for NIL. Negotiating for more money, whether justified or not, does appear more like pay-for-play rather than a player earning what his name is worth, as was the intention. Doing it with the perceived leverage of leaving in the transfer portal only makes it appear that much more so. That’s now led to neither side, Iamaleava or the Volunteers, really winning yet in this situation, and a mess that people can blame on the NCAA.

A lot of aspects in this modern world of college sports are still hot-button topics. This story just so happens to wrap them all into one, including the present belief of what it actually meant to earn in this era of NIL.

Meyer on Iamaleava: ‘There’s no chance he made that decision’

Nico Iamaleava’s surprising departure from Tennessee last weekend has elicited plenty of opinions from around college football, most of which have criticized the circumstances that helped lead to it. While some have cast blame on the quarterback himself or even the NCAA at large, Urban Meyer believes the decision wasn’t Iamaleava’s alone, if at all.

During a discussion about where Iamaleava could land next on Wednesday’s episode of ‘The Triple Option’, Meyer was honest about his current situation. He said it could be a wake-up call for him by the end of this process, to enter the portal and transfer elsewhere for more compensation, if that new program pays him less to play for a worse team.

“What if he wakes up with a salary for $1 million in a place that has no chance at the playoffs?” Meyer said. “That’s a tough one…That’s one where you look at everybody when you’re older and say, ‘Why’d we do that?’”

Ingram then suggested it was “the people around” Iamaleava that were ultimately behind his exit from Tennessee. Meyer agreed wholeheartedly with that thought.

“It’s the people around you, Coach. I highly doubt Nico was being like, ‘I hate Tennessee, I don’t want to come back to Tennessee,’” Ingram said. “It’s the people in your circle putting stuff in your ear – ‘you deserve this…they’re getting this, we should get that’. I don’t know the logistics, I don’t know the insider scoop but I do know it has to be people in his ear.”

“Yeah, there’s no chance he made that decision – no chance,” Meyer said. “He’s not equipped to make that decision.”