This is an opinion column.
Tommy Tuberville is about loyalty.
He believes in the value of a contract.
When someone writes their name on a piece of paper, looks you in the eye and makes a promise, dadgumit, it means something.
Kids nowadays.
It’s a shame they can’t keep those agreements. The senator representing Alabama said this is the biggest complaint he hears from his old coaching friends. These college football players sign NIL deals with collectives and then… poof.
They’re gone.
No warning, no chance to change your mind.
So there is a coach, bound by his employment contract, who is sidelined because a better opportunity came along for one of his players.
These coaches can’t tolerate much more disloyalty, so they turn to a champion of integrity. After years of failed attempts to pass a national NIL law to tame the Wild West of the free market created in 2021, Tuberville has some ideas for the Republican-led Senate when it takes the gavel in January .
Among them: punish those greedy athletes.
RELATED: Punish NIL deal-breaking athletes under new law, says Senator Tuberville
The first-term senator previously spoke to some reporters about it I spoke to the Monday Morning Quarterback Club this week in Birmingham. He mentioned the idea of “some kind of punishment” for players who break NIL contracts during a lengthy answer in which he spoke generally about possible legislation.
It demanded a sequel. So I asked the senator what kind of punishments he had in mind. There were some issues and problems, there was talk of waivers, but he was clear in his intentions.
“My thoughts are, you know, when you sign a contract with NIL, I mean you can’t just break it,” Tuberville said. “I mean, you have to… you want to sign for a year, two years, three years, you have a three-year contract. If you violate it, there should be some kind of punishment.”
Because contracts have always been sacred to Tuberville.
Like in 1998, when as head coach at the University of Mississippi, rumors of other coaching jobs began to circulate. On the Wednesday before playing the Egg Bowl on Thanksgiving, Tuberville told his weekly radio show audience that he was committed to that program.
“They’re going to have to carry me out of here in a pine box,” Tuberville said two days before a better contract at Auburn lured him to take the head coaching job there.
Yikes, bad example.
After arriving, a former Tiger receiver recalled Tuberville’s commitment to loyalty programming. Tyler Siskey, who went on to coach at several colleges in the Southeast, talked about the meeting he had with Tuberville this summer on a podcast he cohosts.
The coach told him that if he planned to run out of that tunnel next year, he would do it with the opponent. A few weeks later, his roommate and a starting receiver heard from a radio news report that his scholarship was being revoked after he left practice, Siskey said.
Okay, okay, that was over twenty years ago.
Probably a misunderstanding, or perhaps Tuberville has learned lessons from these experiences.
After Tuberville *air quotes* After resigning from Auburn in 2008 with a $5.08 million buyout, he ended up at Texas Tech. Quite a deal to end a contract early, but still a fresh start in West Texas. And year 1 went well enough to get a five-season contract after finishing 8-5.
Two years later… oh boy.
A 5-7 season was followed by a 7-5 record and the need to regroup.
In Cincinnati.
The story Texas Tech recruits told landed Tuberville at a recruiting dinner Friday night, where the topic of his long-term plans for the future was discussed.
Offensive line recruit De’Vonte Danzey told Wreckem247.com that Tuberville didn’t give much of an answer before excusing himself from the table. He never returned and the next morning Tuberville was announced as the new head coach at Cincinnati and Denzey eventually signed with Auburn, where he played from 2013 to 2015. He is now the offensive line coach at South Florida.
Years later, Tuberville told AL.com that the recruiting dinner was “completely fake.” but his old boss at Texas Tech explained some of the dynamics at play at the time.
“Just yesterday Tuberville looked me in the eye and gave me his commitment and dedication to Texas Tech football and leading this football program,” AD Kirby Hocutt told the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal the day Cincinnati announced it was hiring Tuberville.
A five-year contract with Cincinnati was more attractive.
Hmmmmm…
“My thoughts are, you know, when you sign a contract with NIL, I mean you can’t just break it.”
Hmmmmm…
“…You have a three-year contract. If you violate it, there should be some kind of punishment.”
Yes…
Well, it turns out Tuberville may not be the best voice of this integrity movement.
The Pin Box Act would not carry the weight of this former coach, who made a seamless transition to the political arena.
That said, there is room for legislation to streamline this unregulated world of NIL’s relationship with recruitment and transfers.
Leadership with the idea of protecting coaches and administrators from greedy athletes may not be the way to sell this.
And touting Tuberville as a champion of contract integrity could be even sillier.
Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.