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Dan Orlovsky hammers NCAA for allowing Nico Iamaleava saga: ‘They should be ashamed’
By Paul Harvey
Published:
ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky is ready to weigh in on the Nico Iamaleava saga, and the former quarterback is putting most of the blame on the NCAA for a broken system.
During Monday’s broadcast of “First Take,” Orlovsky admitted that he does not like the way things played out at Tennessee for Iamaleava or for the Vols locker room under head coach Josh Heupel. Still, that doesn’t take away from what Orlovsky sees in an NCAA leadership group that “should be ashamed” for its broken system.
Orlovsky understands Iamaleava will be targeted by many people as a selfish or greedy person, but it’s one that could have been prevented by the adults in leadership:
“This is such a flaw by the leadership of the NCAA. The fact that grown adults allowed this to happen because it was coming and everybody knew it,” said Orlovsky about the current NIL system. “They should be ashamed that now this young man is going to get targeted a pinpointed as the person being selfish when he’s a kid still. Whether he’s being treated financially as an adult or not, he’s still a kid.”
To Orlovsky’s point, more regulations in place of the current system could prevent similar sagas, but it is mainly the programs themselves that have fought stricter regulations. It’s also hard to pin such decisions on Iamaleava being “a kid” when he has a team of people around him and was reportedly set to make multiple millions previously agreed upon in Knoxville.
Either way, this story might be winding down, but other sagas are bound to occur until someone decides to implement guardrails for programs to follow.
Paul Harvey lives in Atlanta and covers SEC football.
