Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1534903
M A Y 2 0 2 5 5 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M T he tipping point, Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel explained, oc- curred on April 11 after a spring practice no-show. Starting quarterback Nico Iamaleava, displeased with his compensation and eager to amend it, effectively ended his relationship with the Volunteers, whether he knew it or not. "This program has been around for a long time," Heupel told reporters. "There are a lot of great coaches, a lot of great players who came before that laid the cornerstone pieces, the legacy, the tradition that is Tennessee football. It's going to be around a long time after I'm gone and after they're gone. "I want to thank him for everything he's done since he's gotten here, as a recruit and who he was as a player and how he competed inside the building. Obviously, we're moving forward as a program without him. I said it to the guys today. There's no one that's bigger than the Power T. That includes me." The reaction from the broader college football community suggested Iama- leava's contract dispute was a tectonic shift for the sport. The quarterback essentially held out for more money, mimicking a tactic that is seen in the NFL every offseason. Now that Iamaleava has resurfaced at UCLA, which will play host to Penn State on Oct. 4, people are wondering if this is the future of the college game. Maybe more important, they're asking if it will force the game's stakeholders to seriously consider its structure, or lack thereof, as they figure out how to reinvent college football as a fully pro- fessional sport. Penn State went through something similar after its top returning receiver, KeAndre Lambert-Smith, enacted the same plan as Iamaleava last year with much the same result. Displeased with how his NIL deal stacked up with that of incoming transfer receiver Julian Fleming, Lambert-Smith didn't show up to a Penn State practice ahead of the Blue-White Game. Following the game, James Franklin declined to elaborate on Lambert-Smith's status, saying simply that he would be happy to talk about "guys that played in the game and are in the locker room." Faced with a negotiating tactic from Lambert-Smith's side that escalated dramatically and threatened to create a domino effect impacting other players' compensation, Penn State chose order over chaos. Whether fully understood or not by Lambert-Smith's side of the table, the Nittany Lions had made an unequivocal choice. They had opted not to engage, and did so understand- ing what the loss of a veteran wideout would mean to a largely unproven re- ceivers room. In 2023, Lambert-Smith had caught 53 passes for 673 yards and 4 touch- downs. He was an integral part of the Nittany Lions' offensive success that year and was expected to once again be a top target for quarterback Drew Allar in 2024. Instead, Lambert-Smith hit the transfer portal a few days later, releasing a public statement in which he thanked Penn State for the opportunity, expressed gratitude to the program's supporters, and said that he had shown loyalty "to the program, the univer- sity, and most of all the fans." By the end of the month, he had committed to spend his fifth and final season of college football at Auburn. In the end, Allar found a new favorite target in tight end Tyler Warren, and Penn State played for the Big Ten championship and reached the College Football Playoff semifinals. While Lambert-Smith's departure had been significant, it hadn't dealt an insurmountable blow to the Nittany Lions' offense. Moving on from a player who'd sig- naled his willingness to break from conventional negotiations to achieve an individual objective, the program recalibrated for its remaining roster, its parents, and the agents and handlers surrounding them, with a contractual blueprint moving forward. Penn State had shown it was unwilling to engage with players and representatives who were deviating from the standards set for negotiations, and future holdouts could expect to encounter the same response. It's now been a year since Lambert- Smith left, and college football is headed toward a settlement in the House vs. NCAA case that is expected to reestablish some semblance of nor- malcy. Unconventional negotiating tactics won't disappear, of course. But when would-be holdouts are dealing with Penn State, and apparently with Tennessee, too, that approach may not yield the desired payoff. ■ Receiver KeAndre Lambert-Smith left Penn State last spring and ended up at Auburn, where he caught 50 passes for 981 yards and 8 touchdowns in 2024. PHOTO BY STEVE MANUEL O P I N I O N NATE BAUER NATE.BAUER@ON3.COM HOT READ Hardball Negotiating Ploys Are Risky Business