This is war.

There’s no other way to put it after Tennessee athletics director Danny White grabbed his bazooka and started typing. Make no mistake about it, he went for the NCAA’s throat in response to news of another investigation into the Vols leaked Tuesday.

Everything that followed that initial report in Sports Illustrated pointed toward a striking evolution in how schools react to scenarios.

They’re simply not scared anymore.

There was a time when the NCAA investigators instilled fear or at least obedience in the hope of lenience when it was time to face the judge and jury.

White, however, doesn’t come on bended knee. No, he came out swinging a bat towards the NCAA, joining UT Chancellor Donde Plowman and state politicians making moves previously unheard of.

While Plowman’s scathing letter to NCAA president Charlie Baker was obtained by reporters via public records requests, White went straight to the public.

In a statement posted on Elon Musk’s social media platform, White attacked the NCAA on multiple fronts. Right out of the gate, he alleged the governing body violated its own rules by leaking the information to the news media. He said making this “ill-conceived investigation” public forced them to respond.

White went on to say the NCAA staff “does not understand what is happening” in regards to the NIL environment that its enforcement staff is probing in Knoxville.

He calls the NCAA’s NIL guidelines are “nebulous and contradictory” while accusing investigators of “moving the goalpost to fit a predetermined outcome.”

This isn’t even a matter of whether you believe Tennessee or not. Or if you like them.

They’re going for the heart of this whole enterprise.

White’s statement included a line about the need “to be spending our time and energy on solutions to better organize college athletics in the NIL era,” before stating “the NCAA leadership failed” in that duty in 2021.

This day was always lurking on the horizon.

The advent of the NIL era paired with the murky mishmash of NCAA guidelines and state laws created a new market shrouded with undefined redlines. Some programs took aggressive approaches to this new environment — Tennessee clearly among them — who saw an opportunity to build rosters. As one SEC athletics director told me last fall, others took a lower-profile approach to all this knowing the NCAA enforcement wing wouldn’t be spectators as schools tested these blurred lines.

The NCAA already came for Florida State with an NIL case.

Now, this Tennessee investigation has bubbled to the surface in what feels more like the beginning than the end of such headlines.

This is the test of the NCAA’s viability in terms of governing such NIL matters and Tennessee appears more than happy to take up arms. This is all before the NCAA even delivered a notice of allegations, mind you. That didn’t stop the chancellor from going on the attack in her letter to the NCAA president or the Tennessee attorney general filing a federal antitrust lawsuit. They’re challenging the NCAA’s authority to regulate the NIL realm and the state of Virginia joined in the lawsuit filed Wednesday.

The NCAA isn’t taking this quietly, either.

It broke protocol as well with a rare public statement in response to the lawsuit, saying in part it “would exacerbate what our members themselves have frequently described as a “wild west” atmosphere, further tilting competitive imbalance among schools in neighboring states, and diminishing protections for student-athletes from potential exploitation.”

So they’re not backing down.

A day later, White lobbed his grenade into the public discourse.

What’s clear is Tennessee smells blood in the water. They’re not afraid of the NCAA or what they could do in what’s described as a serious investigation that alleges a lack of control on the institutional level.

They’re not throwing themselves to the mercy of the court.

No, Tennessee grabbed their matches and a gas can ready to burn the courthouse to the ground.

Because this is war.

And Tennessee’s firing the first shot in what figures to be a long fight.

Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.