On Aug. 2, 2006, a proverbial hurricane hit college football. Rhett Bomar, the returning starter for Oklahoma, had been dismissed from the team, completely out of the blue. Bomar's crime: he'd taken money from a local car dealership and -- get this -- it wasn't because of all the Nissan Altimas he was moving, it was simply because he was the QB1 of the Sooners. You'll have to take my word for it now, but it was a major scandal at the time. The man who was to be Bomar's position coach at the time, and the man suddenly tasked with training a new QB1 on the day training camp opened, was a 28-year-old rookie QB coach named Josh Heupel.
Nineteen years later, Heupel has again suddenly lost his starting quarterback, and again because of money, only the situation has been flipped on its head. Nico Iamaleava left the team because he wasn't getting paid enough.
And as Knoxville became the center of a 3,000-mile wide storm of controversy over the last 48 hours, Heupel spoke calmly and matter-of-factly. In fact, he opened his post-spring game press conference on Saturday by thanking the fans showing up amid construction around Neyland Stadium. When he first broached the topic of his now-former starting quarterback, Heupel said this: "I want to thank him for everything he's done since he's gotten here, as a recruit to what he's done as a player and how he competed inside of the building."
Iamaleava practiced with the Volunteers on Wednesday before a team-wide off day on Thursday. That's when it was reported Iamaleava and Tennessee were in "contract negotiations." Heupel declined to discuss specifics, but he said he made the decision to move on Friday morning when the former 5-star missed that day's pre-spring game practice.
"There's no one that's bigger than the Power T," Heupel said. "They hear me say it a lot inside of that team room. This program has been a long time with a lot of great coaches, a lot of great players that came before, the cornerstone pieces, the legacy that is Tennessee football. That's what's special about being here. Today you got to see 110 guys that competed their butt off for Tennessee, and do it the right way."
Tennessee is not the first program to lose a player because it declined to pay him his worth, because the player listened to bad advice, or a combination of the two. But it is the first to do so in such a public fashion. There's a bit of poetic justice that Iamaleava is the first college football player to try to execute a hold-out, given that he was the first mega-recruit of the NIL era. Tennessee's collective signed him to a contract worth a reported $8 million over three years in March 2022, months before he enrolled as the No. 1 quarterback in the class of 2023. And it makes sense why Tennessee declined to re-negotiate. Tennessee -- the university and the state -- have already given him a lot. Not only did Tennessee pay him a lot of money, it set a precedent in doing so, then spent a lot of money in court defending its right to negotiate with recruits before they hit campus, which was not allowed by NCAA rules at the time. Tennessee and Iamaleava (by accident, on his part) set another precedent this weekend. "It's my responsibility, our staff's responsibility, to find 105 guys that are going to give their all for Tennessee, day in and day out," Heupel said.
Heupel was understandably non-committal and vague in regards to who will take Tennessee's first snap against Syracuse at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in 140 days. The Vols presently have two scholarship quarterbacks, a redshirt freshman and a true freshman with nine career passes between them, although he all but confirmed his staff will look for someone in the portal, which opens Wednesday. On this front, let's pause before crowning Tennessee as the bastion of integrity within college football. ESPN reported Saturday that one quarterback has already gotten a raise after Tennessee's collective reached out to his representation. It's entirely possible a starting quarterback who had no plans to leave his current school winds up in Knoxville within the next two weeks. That's college football in 2025.
"This program is ready to go win this fall," Heupel said." Since we've been here, we've won with a lot of different QBs. Done it historically in my career with a lot of QBs -- some of those guys have been older, some have been younger, but we'll have a quarterback that's ready to go win and help us compete for a championship.
Somehow, in a situation that's brand-new to college football, Heupel has been through this before. In 2006, Heupel did not have the luxury of finding a new quarterback through the portal. Paul Thompson, a converted wide receiver, stepped into the QB1 role and led the Sooners to a Big 12 championship. If a 28-year-old Heupel can lose his quarterback in August and win a title in December, the 47-year-old head coach won't be phased by this, either. "At the end of the day, this is the greatest team game there is. You've got two choices: it can bring you together or divide you."