Tennessee Chancellor Donde Plowman Rips NCAA In Response To New NIL Investigation

Tennessee Chancellor Donde Plowman responded to the NCAA’s newest investigation into Tennessee athletics in an email the Knoxville News Sentinel and ESPN acquired on Tuesday

Plowman sent the email to NCAA President Charlie Baker on Monday after Tennessee brass met with NCAA officials about the organization’s new investigation which concerns potential NIL violations. In the email, Plowman calls the NCAA “morally wrong” and “intellectually dishonest” in the email.

The brunt of the email attacks the NCAA for retroactively enforcing rules that were not in place when Name, Image and Likeness first became legal in the college sports landscape. Those rules state that schools can’t use NIL as a recruiting tactic.

“Regrettably, in this chaotic environment, the NCAA enforcement staff is trying to retroactively apply unclear guidance to punish and make an example of our institution and others,” Plowman stated in the email.

Plowman goes one step forward though. Not only does Tennessee’s chancellor state that the NCAA can’t retroactively enforce rules that weren’t in place at the time of violations but she attacks the premise that NIL can’t be used as a recruiting tactic as “intellectually dishonest.”

“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 stated according to ESPN’s reporting. “Any discussion about NIL might factor into a prospective student-athlete’s decision to attend an institution. This creates an inherently unworkable situation, and everyone knows it.”

Plowman goes on to echo a popular sentiment across the intercollegiate sports landscape that the NCAA’s unclear guidelines related to NIL are a disservice to recruits, student athletes and institutions.

“The leaders of intercollegiate athletics owe it to student-athletes and their families to establish clear rules and to act in their best interest,” Plowman stated according to KNS. “Instead, two and a half years of vague and contradictory NCAA memos, emails and ‘guidance’ about name, image and likeness (NIL) has created extraordinary chaos that student-athletes and institutions are struggling to navigate. In short, the NCAA is failing.”