The Morning Commute for Wednesday, April 16th
Welcome to the Morning Commute
Today we’re talking about Tennessee Football. Wow, what a mess they’ve made for themselves. In case you hadn’t followed, star Volunteer QB Nico Iamaleava decided recently to overplay what leverage he felt he had, and he essentially held out of Tennessee’s spring game to renegotiate a bigger NIL payday.
Well, it turns out that Josh Heupel and company wouldn’t play the game, and in essence told Iamaleava that he can just pack up and a-leave-a. Evidently they feel okay about their prospects at the position even at this late hour in the spring season.
I won’t get into the details, as there are a million stories written that you can track down to get a feel for the situation. This article from CBS’ Richard Johnson I thought was a pretty even-handed assessment that cast blame with every party involved – the athlete, his handlers, the University and the NCAA.
I’ve said it a hundred times that I’m glad to see college athletes receive long overdue compensation for their name, likeness and image. I just was afraid the system that was established was severely underregulated and would be a mess in the end. We’re seeing it play out in spectacular fashion in Knoxville right now, and unless someone steps in to make some adjustments, odds are we’ll see this kind of thing happen in CoMo too, at some point.
Let’s hope the grown ups figure a way to get this stuff fixed soon. I don’t know what the answer is, but what I do know is that after spending nearly 30 years in college athletics, I’m quite grateful to not be part of that craziness anymore.
Yesterday at Rock M and Rock M+
Illinois State’s Shannon Dowell, one of the top scorers in the Missouri Valley Conference, announced her commitment to Mizzou on Tuesday via her social media. She has two years of eligibility remaining…
Gotta love seeing the increase in scoring, as Dowell improved to 18 points a game last year after averaging 10 points her first year in Normal…
Check out the updated transfer portal tracker for women’s hoops here…
To conclude the defensive portion of this assignment we take a look at the safeties, a group with that dipped in effectiveness in ‘24 but has some of the most fun new pieces in ‘25…
Daylan Carnell and Marvin Burks, Jr. are returning with another year of seasoning, and with other returners plus recruiting/portal additions, the safety group seems to have the potential to boost the defense in 2025…
In a season where everything felt hard for Mizzou softball, this game was a nice change of pace. The Tigers run-ruled SIUE 10-2 in six innings…
- Give your grade to the men’s hoops transfer portal haul so far with the weekly SB Nation Reacts poll…
But there’s a lot of production to replace, and the staff — minus Charlton Young, now, bye CY! — has been active in mining the portal. Thus far, four names have been signed up for a season in black and gold…
Check out the poll and voice your thoughts on the additions including Sebastian Mack, Luke Northweather, Shawn Phillips, Jr. and Jevon Porter…
In an unfortunate turn of events in Mizzou Football recruiting, Missouri is out of the running in the Jackson Cantwell sweepstakes. Cantwell announced his Top 4 schools on Monday, and somewhat surprisingly, the Tigers didn’t make the cut for the in-state product and the 2026 No. 1 recruit in the country. Cantwell will announce his decision on April 30th between Miami, Georgia, Oregon, and Ohio State…
With the way recruiting runs nowadays, never say never, but perhaps a silver lining is that the Tiger coaching staff knows in advance and won’t have to expend further energy and resources for a kid that evidently wasn’t ever coming here…
- Over at Rock M+, we’re talking about transfers – men’s hoops, women’s hoops, football, you name it…
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