A few points of dispute and agreement:
1) I agree, and most here would as well, that we’d of course rather keep Nico than see him leave. That said, I’d rather risk chances with Merk than have someone who should be the equivalent of your general (the QB) who hasn’t bought into the culture or what the coach is selling. That’s a recipe for disaster.
2) The university couldn’t speak out because they literally had no idea what was happening since Nico and his side were being silent and ghosting everyone.
3) I’m curious, what else could TN have done in this situation? They met some of his “demands” back in December and they’ve held up to pretty much their entire agreement with him. He’s the one who’s been shopping around behind their back and leveraging for more money at the last possible second. I’m not sure I can fault the university in this situation.
4) I agree 100% about the lack of stability. You can’t let this crap unfold every offseason, it’s not a good look.
5) That being said, I truly don’t think another school was behind all this. I think TN finally got fed up with their sh*t and went public via anonymous sources. Essentially making him the villain in all this, which is actually a pretty elite move.
6) You admitted you were late to the party, but all of this was settled Thursday night and made official Friday with him missing practice. TN was never going to budge on this, especially with the way the Nico camp has been acting. So him missing practice was all he needed to do to show the program what his next steps were gonna be. Plus, once he missed practice, he lost what little credibility he still had with the fanbase. We weren’t going to tolerate that act of cowardice.
7) Finally, I agree with you. NIL is starting to make college sports less fun, at least college football. My hope is this is a giant wake up call and the NCAA starts to act. Unfortunately it happened to us and not the likes of Bama or UGA, so chances of them acting are slim.
