By Bruce Feldman, Joe Rexrode, David Ubben and Chris Vannini
Tennessee is under NCAA investigation for alleged name, image and likeness violations in multiple sports, a school source confirmed. Sports Illustrated first reported the news about the NCAA investigation for what SI described as “major” violations.
Tennessee has not yet received a Notice of Allegations, a source familiar with the situation said, adding, “Tennessee feels confident that UT has followed the NCAA’s guidelines related to NIL.”
In a letter to NCAA president Charlie Baker on Monday, Tennessee chancellor Donde Plowman criticized what she called “two and a half years of vague and contradictory NCAA memos, emails and ‘guidance’ about name, image and likeness” and said the organization is “failing.” She said the NCAA’s allegations are “factually untrue and procedurally flawed.” A group from the University of Tennessee met with members of the NCAA’s enforcement staff Monday, according to the letter.
“Student-athletes, prospective student-athletes, parents, coaches, NCAA member institutions, collectives and anyone working in college athletics today need to have clear rules to follow,” Plowman wrote. “As you acknowledged in the recent congressional hearing, the NIL guidance from the NCAA to student-athletes and institutions has been ‘inconsistent and unclear, and the ambiguity has filled schools, student-athletes and collectives with uncertainty about how to follow the rules.’”
The NCAA has allowed players to monetize their name, image and likeness since July 1, 2021, but such benefits are not permitted to be used as recruiting inducements. NIL-related investigations have been sparse and presumed ineffective, but a 2023 bylaw that allows NCAA investigators to use circumstantial evidence — and not just direct sourcing — in investigations gives them more power to pursue such cases. The rules and laws around the market are so new and change so often that their enforcement has not been widely feared, but the NCAA Committee on Infractions announced earlier this month that it levied penalties against Florida State’s football program, an assistant coach, one of its collectives and a booster for NIL-related recruiting violations.
Florida is also under investigation for violations in the NIL space; the NCAA is investigating Florida regarding the 2022 recruitment of quarterback Jaden Rashada, a person who was interviewed, as well as a second person who was briefed on the investigation, confirmed. But the lack of precedent and enforcement surrounding these rules, as well as a lack of detail surrounding the allegations, make it impossible to project how these cases might ultimately play out.
NCAA enforcement managing director for development Mark Hicks told a conference room of administrators at the NCAA convention earlier this month that enforcement would focus on tampering and inducements in recruiting through NIL and that it had proof of various violations, though he didn’t reveal where. He added that coaches told them of creative ways to induce players to campus, such as vehicles, apartments or transportation for families. Some of it wasn’t new, but NIL and transfers had turned it into a “washing machine” with how quickly things cycle.
At that NCAA convention, the Division I Council proposed allowing schools to connect athletes with boosters, but it would apply only to signed or enrolled athletes, not recruit or transfer prospects. It comes a year after a previous NCAA bylaw change allowed the infractions process to presume an entity had violated NIL rules based on circumstantial evidence unless the entity could clearly prove it complied with NCAA rules.
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The Division I Board of Directors issued “guidance” to schools in May 2022 clarifying that collectives qualified as boosters and were subject to the same longstanding rules involving boosters and recruits. At the time, the board said NIL violations from the previous 10 months could be pursued, but only the most severe violations, as it attempted to look forward.
The new investigation at Tennessee comes on the heels of a previous NCAA probe that concluded last July. In that investigation, the NCAA determined that over the course of three seasons, the Tennessee football program committed 18 Level I violations encompassing more than 200 individual infractions. As part of the NCAA sanctions, Tennessee was hit with a fine of $8 million that was deemed equivalent to the financial impact the school would have faced if it missed the postseason during the 2023 and 2024 seasons.
One question for Tennessee is whether last year’s outcome from the Jeremy Pruitt years — in which a shift in philosophy was cited for no postseason ban — makes UT athletics more vulnerable this time around. Tennessee’s football program was placed on probation for five years as part of the NCAA sanctions last July.
Considering Tennessee’s status as a recent offender, the Vols may need to tread lightly in this case, but that doesn’t preclude a full-throated legal defense challenging any rules the NCAA is attempting to enforce.
“It is intellectually dishonest for the NCAA staff to issue guidelines that say a third-party collective/business may meet with prospective student-athletes, discuss NIL, even enter into a contract with prospective student-athletes, but at the same time say that the collective may not engage in conversations that would be of a recruiting nature,” Plowman wrote to Baker. “Any discussion about NIL might factor into a prospective student-athlete’s decision to attend an institution.
“We emphasized to the NCAA enforcement staff that the actions they are considering are contradictory with and will undermine the vision and ‘new day’ that you yourself have laid out for NIL.”
This story will be updated.
(Photo: Donald Page / Getty Images)
