When Josh Heupel made the decision to let starting quarterback Nico Iamaleava walk rather than pay him a ridiculous amount of NIL money, it was mostly met with a hero's welcome - except by former head coach and current FOX college football analyst, Urban Meyer.
Meyer questioned the decision to part ways with Iamaleava, saying point blank that Tennessee was now "screwed" and that Heupel will have some explaining to do when Tennessee is losing games to key opponents like Florida.
Urban Meyer may be a decent college football analyst, but the last thing he should be doing is questioning the decisions of another head coach when it comes to player personnel in the NIL and transfer portal era.
Beyond Meyer's track record of throwing both assistant coaches and players under the bus, or his own decisions to abandon teams, the fact is that he never had a coach a single game in the horrific new era of the transfer portal and NIL
Meyer unceremoniously left his "dream job" as the head coach at Ohio State in 2018, the same year the transfer portal was introduced, and never had to deal with the open-world bargaining and shim-sham of NIL enticements rather than under-the-table dealings.
Most importantly, he never had a starting quarterback essentially attempt to publicly hold his program hostage in the hopes of cashing in.
The man who set the SEC bar for bad decisions and sweeping messes caused by players under the rug suddenly wants to coach-splain to Josh Heupel how not giving in to overentitlement could hurt his program?
Don't make us laugh, coach.
What Josh Heupel did was draw a line in the sand that no other coaches have been willing to do to this point. He opened the door for "enough is enough" when it comes to paying players what they are worth to a program. Whether or not it costs him any losses during the season makes no difference. Tennessee fans, as well as its rivals, think he struck a blow that needed striking.
If Urban Meyer wants to break down the X's and O's of Josh Heupel's offense or his clock management skills or even how he prepares for particular opponents, then he's on brand. But making a public judgement on how Heupel handles a situation like this? That takes brass.