Insider’s Insight: Spyre Sports Attorney Dives into Tennessee Football’s NIL Saga

Insider’s Insight: Spyre Sports Attorney Dives into Tennessee Football’s NIL Saga

In the midst of the NCAA probe, the representative for Tennessee’s collective made a statement on the NIL agreement with Vols quarterback Nico Iamaleava.

Numerous sources state that while the NCAA is looking into Tennessee’s Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) activity in several sports, Nico Iamaleava, the Vols’ redshirt freshman quarterback, is one of the primary subjects of the probe.

One of the first high-profile and profitable NIL deals to be awarded to a blue-chip prospect after NIL entered college sports in July 2021 is said to have gone to the former five-star prospect, who committed to Tennessee in March 2022 and was ranked as the No. 2 player in the nation in the 2023 recruiting class by 247Sports.

Tuesday night, Tom Mars, a well-known college sports lawyer who has been employed by Spyre Sports, which is in charge of Tennessee’s main NIL collective, issued a statement on the organization’s NIL agreement with Iamaleava.

Mars most recently represented Jim Harbaugh, the head coach of Michigan now-former, in his NCAA violations case(s). Mars has a lengthy history of defending student-athletes and schools in NCAA legislative affairs. Mars has also worked with a few transfers in eligibility battles.

The lawyer from Arkansas, who has been collaborating with Spyre since last June at the latest, made his remarks about Iamaleava in reaction to several rumors that connected him to the NCAA’s probe into Tennessee’s non-legitimate conduct.

The complete statement from Mars that was posted on social media is as follows:

Nico Iamaleava and Spyre Sports entered into a mutually beneficial contractual partnership in early 2022, independent of the University of Tennessee or anybody connected to its athletics program.

The agreement involved a restricted assignment of Nico Iamaleava’s NIL rights, regardless of the university he ultimately chose to attend. These “representation agreements” are becoming more and more typical.

Prospective college athletes are free to sign into such agreements, and the parties agreed that California law would govern their contractual rights and obligations.

Spyre’s assertion that he expected Nico to be drafted by an NFL team later on demonstrated the commercial rationality of their agreement. The agreement also made clear the limitations preventing the use of any team or school’s “logo or insignia.”

In addition to explicitly stating that “nothing in [the] agreement constitutes any form of inducement to ATHLETE to enroll at any school and/or join any athletic team,” the agreement compelled Spyre to defend the worth of Nico’s NIL rights.

To put it briefly, the arrangement had nothing to do with recruiting to the University of Tennessee or any other school and was entirely compliant with the NCAA’s current NIL “guidelines.”

Presently representing over 100 collegiate athletes, Spyre Sports and the Vol Club take great pride in having assisted them in maximizing the value of their legally protected name, image, and likeness.

The NCAA was eager to find out more about Tennessee, according to Sports Illustrated, which also mentioned Iamaleava. However, later stories were more definitive in describing his role.

The New York Times stated that the investigation “focuses” on the use of a private plane by a “so-called donor collective” to bring Iamaleava to campus while he was a recruit, following a claim by CBS Sports that the inquiry “centers” on Iamaleava’s NIL arrangement.

The NCAA informed members that it was against its policies to use NIL as a recruiting inducement about a year after it started. More recently, the NCAA said that it will investigate and punish NIL breaches more aggressively in the past and that it was lowering the standard of proof in certain situations.

The NCAA and President Charlie Baker were chastised by Tennessee Chancellor Donde Plowman in a strong letter for their purpose and method of looking into NIL activity when the regulations pertaining to NIL have been, in Baker’s own words, “inconsistent and unclear,” with “the ambiguity [filling] schools, student-athletes, and collectives with uncertainty about how to follow the rules.”

Plowman attacks the NCAA in the letter, accusing it of “trying to bully institutions back to a time” when it was in charge of student-athlete compensation and the regulating body, which it lost when the Supreme Court decided against it in the historic Alston case.

“I believe the NCAA has not yet accepted the fact that the enforcement staff’s pursuit of NIL enforcement is a continuation of the opposition to paying student-athletes—a stance that gave rise to the Alston ruling and every other lawsuit the NCAA is currently embroiled in.” Plowman writes.

Tennessee is the most recent university that the NCAA has targeted for its attempt to enact NIL laws in the past. NIL breaches resulted in penalties for Miami women’s basketball and Florida State football. The NCAA has also been looking into Florida’s football program in an effort to find any such errors.

The Vols recently resolved an NCAA case last summer, which complicates the situation with Tennessee.

After it was discovered that the prior coaching staff had committed 18 serious infractions between 2018 and 2020, the program was spared a postseason penalty.

The NCAA complimented Tennessee for its handling of the situation, from starting an internal investigation and swiftly removing the offending parties to including the NCAA in its own probe. Tennessee was punished with a sizable punishment, recruitment restrictions, and scholarship reductions.

According to Plowman’s letter, “neither the collective nor student-athletes broke any rule or guidance document as they existed at the time any actions were taken,” and Tennessee “complied with interim NIL policy and guidance” from the NCAA.

The NCAA has not yet sent Tennessee a formal Notice of Allegations.

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