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No Country For Old Men: Steve Sarkisian on Nico Iamaleava, NIL, and more

by:RT Young•about 17 hours
Steve Sarkisian
Steve Sarkisian (Will Gallagher/Inside Texas)

Steve Sarkisian was clear: he doesn’t deal in hypotheticals. He made a reporter rephrase a question Monday about former Tennessee quarterback Nico Iamaleava to explicitly refer to it as “the Tennessee situation.”

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I’m not sure if Sark was doing the verbal equivalent of knocking on wood by refusing to entertain a “what would you do” scenario. It felt like even acknowledging it might jinx his own locker room. As someone who has a master’s and is working toward a PhD in the dark arts of sports superstition, I have to say I respected it.

But really, I think Sarkisian wanted to talk about the contract dispute that’s dominated the college football world over the past week. It comes on the heels of Sark, Chris Del Conte, and other UT representatives traveling to Washington D.C. to advocate for greater legislation around NIL, or whatever we’re calling this now.

“This was going to come to a head at some point. It was just a matter of which school was it going to happen to first,” Sarkisian told the media Monday.

That statement was saying the quiet part out loud. Though Texas hasn’t been immune to tense negotiations or even standoffs between school and player, none have gone public like the situation between Tennessee and Iamaleava.

Sark likes to reference “guardrails” when talking about NIL and the state of the sport. In reality, there are none. The Iamaleava situation is, on one hand, a case of someone’s bluff being called. But it’s also a symptom of the system’s failure. A mile marker on a chaotic journey. The car has left the road, flown off the cliff, and now sits in a smoldering heap.

Sarkisian made it clear he’s hopeful legislation can bring some sanity back. But he was just as quick to note how easily it could overcorrect in the other direction. Especially when words like “unions” and “firings” start entering the chat. He said he didn’t get into coaching to manage contracts or fire college kids from their football “jobs,” but to mold young men. The fan in me gulped hearing that. It felt like it could be a subconscious admission from Sark that this landscape might soon be no country for old men.

I too didn’t fall in love with this sport hoping it would one day morph into… this. Public disputes over ambiguous contracts that leave a team and fan base without a quarterback four months before the season. Oh, but don’t worry Vol fans, the portal opens tomorrow. Coach Josh Heupel will just grab someone else’s quarterback, from the Big 12, maybe the charred remains of the Pac-12 and it’ll be that fanbase left suffering in the fall.

So it goes.

It’s hard out there. Even if it gives us plenty to write about.

But imagine a collegiate sports world where college player firings can happen right in front of our eyes. That would be a strange one. A new one. Certainly not the sport we’re used to.

And yet, it’s exactly what just happened between Tennessee and Iamaleava.

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That new world is here. Will guardrails be able to save it?

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