The Iamaleava family has a pretty easy decision to make. They need to fire their agent. Tennessee has an easy decision. They need to hire a general manager.
The latest news concerning Nico Iamaleava and the former Tennessee quarterback’s departure from Knoxville to UCLA has the agent at the center of the ugly, nasty, hasty divorce. College football analyst Josh Pate said on the Pat McAfee Show that the family wasn’t at the crux of the split when Iamaleava headed west and that, surprisingly, neither was his father, Nic.
“The people who screwed this up for him, his representation, should do the first dignified thing they’ve done and step up to take the arrows for him,” Josh Pate said on The Pat McAfee Show. “He’s not the one that got himself into this mess.”
That would seem to put the Vols in the clear. Well, that depends on who you ask.
“They ran out there and ran Nico Iamaleava under the bus,” Fox Sports Joe Klatt recently said.
Perhaps, but it doesn’t really feel like it. It feels more like Tennessee got a pass on this personnel misstep, even if they didn’t deserve it. The Vols won’t likely get another pass if something so egregious happens again.
I’ve argued for months that Tennessee needs a general manager or a personnel director. Something other than UT offensive coordinator Joey Halzle trying to placate the situation with Iamaleava the day before he skipped practice and left town, which was the case.
One could argue that Halzle isn’t qualified to be Tennessee’s offensive coordinator. I’ll let you debate that. However, I’m sure he’s not qualified to handle a multi-million contract dispute.
Along with the entire athletic department, Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel was excused for the Iamaleava debacle. He shouldn’t be. Why wasn’t he with Iamaleava on the eve of his departure instead of Halzle? That’s just a bad personnel decision.
Great football coaches do three things well: coach football, recruit players and help raise money for their athletic department. They don’t usually take part in business negotiations, even their own. Agents handle that.
The Iamaleava incident isn’t going to be an isolated incident if Tennessee doesn’t take action. They need someone with a business background to go toe-to-toe with agents representing players. If not, the Vols aren’t going to look so guiltless the next time they lose transfer to another school and it’s going to happen more often.
