As chaos unfolds around the sport with skyrocketing money flowing in and a dizzying amount of player movement, the man unintentionally responsible for much of it prepares for a first-round playoff game.
Tennessee quarterback Nico Iamaleava didn't set out to be the face of this new world of college football. Big in stature but soft-spoken in nature, the 6-foot-6, 215-pound redshirt freshman has tried to keep a low profile and rarely discusses off-field topics like name, image and likeness.
But that Iamaleava has No. 9 Tennessee readying to play No. 8 Ohio State Saturday night in Columbus is the result of a multi-party, all-out effort to protect him from NCAA enforcement. This effort ripped the shackles off anyone still trying to cling to amateurism within college athletics.
"It created true above-the-board free agency in college football specifically but all of college athletics really," said Mit Winter, a Kennyhertz Perry attorney specializing in NIL and working closely with collectives.
Tennessee knew the NCAA was coming after it.
Before Iamaleava even began his true freshman season in 2023, the NCAA had set its sights on the relationship between Iamaleava and Spyre Sports, the Tennessee-affiliated NIL collective that had quickly earned a reputation as one of the best in the country. In a February 2022 Athletic story that served as a shot across the bow for many in the industry, Spyre Sports announced its bold intentions of raising $25 million annually to pay Tennessee athletes. Proverbial alarms went off in the NCAA's Indianapolis offices.
The crown jewel of Spyre's early NIL efforts was Iamaleava, a five-star recruit from Long Beach, California, who Tennessee boosters hoped could elevate the Volunteers back to their 1990s heyday under Philip Fulmer. In another Athletic story, a five-star recruit signed a historic NIL deal that could potentially total $8 million in payments. The recruit's identity wasn't revealed in the story, but it was widely reported to be between Iamaleava and Spyre.
(The actual number between the two parties was even higher, according to the 2024 college football book "The Price: What It Takes to Win in College Football's Era of Chaos," which reported the deal totaled $10 million.)
The failed deal between Florida and quarterback Jaden Rashada, now the source of a lawsuit involving Florida coach Billy Napier, would surpass it on paper for $13.85 million. And a reported $10 million deal this year between Michigan and five-star quarterback Bryce Underwood would be in the same neighborhood. But Iamaleava's big deal was the first and caught plenty of other programs off-guard.
"People were definitely very surprised by how big that number was," Winter said, "and surprised that it happened because that was really the first public information about a high school recruit having an NIL deal with a collective that everyone knew was part of the recruiting process for him committing there.
"Most people saw that and were like, 'Oh wow, so this is how it's going to be now? I guess we're going to have to play this game as well.'"
The public nature of the recruitment led to questions about whether the NCAA would pursue an investigation against Tennessee and Spyre Sports. Faced with a membership that publicly demanded results and yet forced it to go off ambiguously worded guidelines, the NCAA enforcement team quietly pursued investigations into multiple big-name programs, including Florida State, Florida, and, yes, Tennessee, as it tried to slow down what some painted as blatant cheating within the sport. NCAA rules prohibited using NIL money as a recruiting inducement, but "pay to play," as commonly referred to, was rampant throughout college football.
If the NCAA expected to get a cooperative Tennessee like it had with a previous investigation into former head coach Jeremy Pruitt and multiple staff members, it was gravely mistaken.
Meanwhile, Tennessee chancellor Donde Plowman -- whose program had been exalted for "exemplary cooperation" during the investigation and verdict of the Pruitt-era violations -- was dismayed when NCAA enforcement again tried to set up shop in Knoxville. She had believed -- or hoped -- that her previous cooperation would buy Tennessee goodwill with the NCAA. With the football program already under probation and yet flourishing under Josh Heupel, Pruitt's replacement, another NCAA investigation could have disastrous results on the university and the financial engine for the entire Knoxville community.
"I really felt strongly, as did our athletic department, that we hadn't done anything wrong and that they had changed the rules midstream and were trying to apply a rule back to before it was a rule," Plowman told CBS Sports. "That just seemed wrong to me. I felt strongly the need to speak about it."
The Tennessee chancellor attempted to set a meeting with NCAA president Charlie Baker to discuss what the university believed to be a "factually untrue and procedurally flawed" investigation.
When that meeting request was denied, Plowman fired off a blistering letter on Jan. 29th to Baker, attacking "vague and contradictory NCAA memos, emails and 'guidance' about name, image and likeness," and summed up the situation thusly: "In short, the NCAA is failing."
"I learned so much from the previous two-and-a-half years from that other case (that) once they charge you with something their rules are you then can't speak about it," Plowman said. "I couldn't let that happen. I wanted to tell our story first and frame the story. My job is stewarding this university, our athletic department, all of our academic programs, and that would have really hurt to have gone two-and-a-half years with what we thought was an unfair charge and not be able to talk about it."
After Plowman's letter to the NCAA became public the next day, Iamaleava shared an Instagram post that said, "Donde Plowman vs. NCAA is the beef I didn't know I needed in my life."
It was just the start of Tennessee's plan to fight back. Behind the scenes, months of work had gone into readying a defense for Iamaleava and the university. This time, Tennessee knew it had to be proactive as the NCAA kept requesting documents -- showing special interest in a private plane that flew Iamaleava from California to Knoxville.
According to Tom Mars, who represented Spyre Sports, the plan was three-pronged: First, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti would file an injunction in federal court to prevent the NCAA from enforcing vague NIL guidelines. If that wasn't successful, Mars had a filing ready to go in Tennessee state court, with the university expected to follow suit shortly thereafter.
The NCAA wanted to rule Iamaleava ineligible and force Tennessee to disassociate with Spyre Sports, according to Mars, and none of the invested parties had any interest in letting that happen.
"The Tennessee lawsuit was an ambush that they walked right into," Mars told CBS Sports. "And they did walk right into it."
Skrmetti filed an antitrust lawsuit in the Eastern District of Tennessee federal court on Jan. 31, citing the NCAA's investigation into Tennessee as an "unlawful restriction" of NIL rules. The lawsuit argued that NCAA rules prohibiting NIL money being utilized in recruiting "violates federal antitrust law, thwarts the free market and harms student-athletes."
Judge Clifton Corker, presiding over the case, agreed. Corker granted a preliminary injunction against the NCAA on Feb. 23, saying that the organization likely violated federal antitrust law and that athletes prevented from knowing their potential compensation before choosing a school would be hurt.
The ruling further weakened an NCAA organization that many within the industry already believed to be feckless. Shortly thereafter the NCAA canceled interviews scheduled for the Florida investigation regarding the Rashada recruitment and announced a week after the Corker ruling that it would pause all enforcement-led investigations into NIL and third-party supported NIL investigations.
The NCAA was now signaling it all but closed up its enforcement shop.
"One of the biggest mistakes the NCAA made that substantially contributed to the situation they've created and that they're now in is their decision to pursue enforcement action against Spyre Sports based on its relationship with Nico," Mars said. "The case was meritless. It may not have looked pretty from the outside but the people who manage Spyre Sports did a great job of doing what they needed to document the relationship in a way that made it perfectly legitimate under the existing NCAA rules."
In the immediate aftermath, it freed up collectives, schools, players and agents to be much more open with their business no longer fearing reprisal from the NCAA. Collective leaders no longer had to play dumb about having no association with the football program while knowing they'd be directly told which players needed what amounts of money. It was no longer such a taboo topic as coaches could freely talk to recruits about what the compensation would look like at their school. Tampering became even more common, with no way to stop it.
"Our whole thing was like why can't we talk to recruits at that point?" Russell White, the president of The Collective Association, told CBS Sports in an interview earlier this year. "Why can't we be very open about what we're doing as far as our methods and how we choose kids? It just brings clarity to the whole situation.
"If it's happening, these kids need to know when they make decisions and there will be a lot less negative fallout than putting these restrictions in place simply to create a gray area where people are nervous to operate in or maintain control which the NCAA has tried to do."
Iamaleava, the focal point of the lawsuit that forever changed college sports, guided Tennessee to a 10-2 record in his first season as the Volunteers' starting quarterback. He didn't put up flashy numbers in a run-heavy offense -- 2,512 passing yards, 19 touchdowns and five interceptions -- but that Tennessee beat Alabama again this season and made the first year of the 12-team College Football Playoff is reason enough why so many rallied to defend him earlier this year.
Without Iamaleava lining up at quarterback, it's hard to imagine Tennessee being in this position, even with one of the nation's best defenses and running backs (Dylan Sampson). But with him Tennessee football is back in the big-time and ready to compete for a national championship. The fanbase is fired up and represents a scary enough invading force north threat that Ohio State AD Ross Bjork had to issue a public plea to Ohio State fans to not sell their tickets.
The Saturday night clash between the two historic programs pits an unlikely face of NIL against a $20 million all-in team that expects to win a national championship. Ohio State coach Ryan Day's long-term future could ultimately depend on the success he has with this stacked roster.
Iamaleava's impact is felt throughout college football right now, though. College football programs are aggressively looking to upgrade their rosters, money has flooded into the sport and the prices for top players soared. Eliminating all NIL-related enforcement coupled with unlimited transfers and the impending House settlement, which if approved, will bring revenue sharing to college sports, has dramatically shaped the current makeup and future of college football.
"Not only did that contribute significantly to the end of NIL enforcement but the bedlam and chaos or whatever you want to call it," Mars said. "You can thank the good folks of Tennessee for where we are in the playoffs."
MORE: Where Nico ranks among College Football Playoff's 12 QBs