The Nico situation has taken the CFB world by storm as the first, of probably more, holdout for a player due to contract negotiations with the new NIL rules.
Everything kind of scattered all at once and the full shape of the situation took shape within 48 hours followed by his departure from the program. Tennessee ended the relationship once they found out news of Nico “quietly” but not that quietly shopping his talents around to other programs to see if he can get the amount of more he was looking for elsewhere.
Let's take a little deeper look into what this means for CFB, Tennessee, and Nico going forward.
Tennessee was shell shocked by this whole situation with how things ended. Supposedly there have been negotiations about Nico wanting more money for months but they didn’t expect things to end up the way they did.
There were also rumors that he was asking for money as early as last year during the CFP window because of extra games to be played and for incentive purposes. If that is true, that is a bad look for Nico showing where his priorities are before such an important period of time for the program making their first CFP.
Tennessee handled this the best they could have in my opinion with Nico putting them in a terrible spot. Nico was demanding more money and then him not showing up to spring practice unannounced right before the actual spring game because of this might’ve made the coaching staff appear “weak” if no consequences were made.
The university was willing to listen and negotiate back and forth about his NIL money but Nico took matters into his own hands trying to gain leverage which ended up backfiring completely. Coach Heupel coming out and doing what he did was a big stand for the team also saying “No one is bigger than the team”.
This will gain some serious points for him as a leader of such a high level program and even gain more respect from his players around him.
The spring transfer window opens in a few days and they could look there for a possible replacement or at least competition to add to their already underrated QB room. Jake Meklinger and George MacIntyre could be the answer this year with both guys being great recruits out of high school but adding one more guy is probably ideal for depth purposes as well. Tennessee will be more than fine when it is all said and done.
Nico’s situation on the other hand is definitely a little more muddy. Him doing this in the fashion he did will only lead other programs to have a pause when looking to bring him into the program. Other universities may either not want to pay him the money he was looking for or wouldn’t want the media attention that would come from bringing him in.
The team might also not be as receptive to having him come in to be the leader of their program handling things in the way he did at his previous stop at Tennessee. He was talking to programs such as USC, UNC, Oregon, UCLA, etc. but from recent reports all state that these teams might be out on him at this point not wanting to deal with the circus that could come with signing him.
He is more likely to get less money from his next time as his pickings are getting more slim each passing day. For the first time since the NIL became what it is today it seems like the power of the player took a step back and more towards the power of the universities/programs.
For CFB in general this seems to have helped and hurt in certain ways. Obviously you want to see the top recruits and players play but you also don’t want to see them try to use leverage tactics the way Nico did. This makes it seem like more of a profession than amateur, which is still technically what college sports is.
Player’s should get paid but this proves that the NIL needs tweaking to make the system better for all parties. Institutions make a lot of money from these football programs and the players risking their bodies each week/season.
The passion still has to be there though for the players rather than having that money only mindset. This will cause tougher transitions going into the NFL with those players giving these younger guys the “entitled” label and creating divides before they even get drafted. Having more strict verbiage involved in the NIL contracts will help alleviate concerns over this happening more. These contracts need to be more NFL like so there’s no loopholes and no confusion of what’s expected from the players.
Think about it, these college players are using legit agents so the NCAA needs to make these contracts more outlined. The reason to bring this up is because one of Nico’s reasons for wanting more money was because of playing more games. Maybe creating incentive based goals in the contract can help this.
Also limiting the transfer windows and adjusting the timing of the windows can help steer the leverage away from the players. There’s changes needed to be made and it’s up to the NCAA to figure out what the next steps need to be.
In conclusion, this situation was very unfortunate but was probably bound to happen eventually. This was similar to the Matthew Sluka situation but that was due to the university not living up to their end of the bargain. It was inevitable for this to come up at some point and hopefully things get sorted out sooner rather than later.