It’s not that he’s leaving. It’s how he’s leaving. That’s the bottom line. In playing by the rules of a broken system that has no rules, Nico Iamaleava just became a Gordon Gekko for the 21st century, the college football poster child for “greed is good.”

Screw the team.

Secure the bag.

Apparently no one on Team Nico, not him, his family or his representation, stopped to ponder the difference between whether he could and whether he should.

Unless his pay-for-play deal masquerading as NIL said otherwise, the quarterback had every right to do what he did. To ask Tennessee for more than the $2.4 million he was reportedly set to be paid this year. To reach out to at least one other school since last season ended, allegedly, to gauge its interest in meeting his demands. To skip practice the day before the spring game after news broke about his attempt to renegotiate with the UT collective.

On the other side of the bargaining table, where so much of the business of college football is now conducted without guardrails or common sense, Tennessee had every right to do what it did. To refuse to renegotiate. To take a calculated risk that the quarterback of its 2024 playoff team wouldn’t walk after one year as the starter. To thank him for his service and wish him well on his future endeavors.

So if the player had every right to do what he did and the school had every right to do what it did, why does it all feel so wrong?

Because college football as an enterprise that continues to print money may be very much alive, but college football as we knew it is dead.

Where were you when they played taps? Were you one of the relative few who drove to Auburn or Tuscaloosa on Saturday to watch more drills at the end of spring drills instead of an actual spring game? Were you one of the many who flipped on the TV for a sneak peek at Deuce Knight or Keelon Russell only to discover that the evolution of the quarterback position at Auburn and Alabama would not be televised?

Sorry. We regret to inform you that the spring game is dead. However, if you pony up to join the Yea Alabama collective, you still can stand in a long line to get Ryan Williams to sign your forehead.

As far as we know, no one took a scientific poll to determine the public’s taste or distaste for the weekend’s seismic turn of events around the SEC. Anecdotal social media evidence suggests strongly that the Tennessee football program has never been this popular outside the Volunteer State.

By declining to acquiesce to Team Nico’s request, by holding the door open for its starting quarterback to search for greener pastures, by standing up for the Power T in team, Josh Heupel and company seemed to earn an unprecedented amount of respect from rival fan bases.

How soon they forget. It was the state of Tennessee that sued the NCAA and won an injunction to stop the enforcement process that was investigating Iamaleava’s original pay-for-play deal masquerading as NIL. The ensuing settlement cleared the way for collectives to sign prospects to such deals and ended any real distinction between NIL money and pay-for-play payments.

In short, the state of Tennessee’s lawsuit helped create the environment for the relationship between Team Nico and Tennessee football to disintegrate rapidly and end badly.

Be careful what you sue for.

Iamaleava quitting on Tennessee and Tennessee quitting on him is the logical outcome of this newly free market run amok. A mediocre quarterback – who didn’t finish in the top five in the SEC last season in a single one of the 10 passing categories listed on cfbstats.com – demanded a 67 percent raise, from $2.4 million to $4 million if the reported figures are correct, a dicey proposition all its own.

A good but not great program – whose players walked out shirtless to warm up for UT’s first playoff game in 26 years and proceeded to get pantsed by Ohio State 42-17 – has gotten more credit for cutting Iamaleava loose after one full season than for signing him in the first place.

Meanwhile, that federal judge has yet to approve the House settlement, which might bring some sanity to these proceedings. College sports leaders have thrown another Hail Mary to Congress, which is as likely to save the day as Iamaleava running out of bounds on the last play against Arkansas. Oh, and another free agency window opens Wednesday, which will allow some desperate program outside the SEC to pay Team Nico’s exorbitant price.

The only hope to create some long-term stability is collective bargaining, which would establish ground rules amenable to both sides and lead to player contracts with compensation, incentives and consequences. It would be an honest admission of what college football is and what it is not at the top of the sport, and what it is not is what it used to be.

So it’s probably time to update that old wooden sign in the Tennessee locker room, the one players tap per tradition before they enter the Neyland Stadium tunnel en route to their sprint through the Power T. As a sign of the times, the sign needs an asterisk.

I will give my all for Tennessee today!*

*If Tennessee gives me all I want.