Tuesdays with Tom: The Mailbag is Open!
Answering reader questions about NIL in college sports, phone snooping, Andor and Bill Belichick
Welcome back to the official Tuesdays with Tom mailbag! I’m currently abroad. You’ll find out much more about that later. For now, here’s what my readers wanted to know in my absence.
Do you feel NIL is ruining college athletics? It’s hard to believe that $2 million was not enough for a student athlete (Nico Iamaleava).
Chris K.
Welcome back, Chris! I believe we will look back on this Nico Iamaleava situation as an inflection point in college sports history. To briefly summarize, Iamaleava caused a major stir when he ditched a Tennessee Volunteers spring practice over a NIL negotiation dispute. According to reports, Iamaleava agreed to a four year, $8 million NIL deal with Tennessee as a five-star prospect in high school. He was Tennessee’s quarterback for one season and helped take them to the College Football Playoff. He essentially instigated the first ever college football contract hold-out, reportedly asking for $4 million per year instead of $2 million.
Tennessee kicked him off the team. Iamaleava is now with UCLA. It's unclear if the Bruins caved into his contract demands. I hope he didn’t get that raise because it would set a dangerous precedent within an already chaotic NIL landscape in college sports. It’s one thing for college athletes to make money in a world where the schools are ruthlessly profiting from their athletic careers. But the increasingly thinner lines between these “amateurs” and paid professionals desperately need limits and regulation.
In professional sports, individual players can afford to be bigger than the team. This is reflected in their pay if they’re great enough. Fans have no problem siding with superstars over the team. This is not the same with college sports. Most college sports fans are alums. Their loyalty is with the university. If Nico Iamaleava was unquestionably excellent at quarterback, he might have had a better shot at re-negotiating his NIL payday. He wasn’t. Iamaleava was an average freshman quarterback. Frankly, I agree that $8 million is quite generous for a 20 year-old unproven commodity.
I broadly support college players being paid. I don’t support the ridiculous timing and fickle nature of the transfer portal. I don’t want non-stop, unlimited player free agency, which is what played out between Iamaleava and Tennessee. If we’re going to do this, let’s do it all the way. Let’s make firm, transparent contracts for college athletes. Let’s allocate a de facto salary cap for football teams. When all that happens, we can take the final step: cutting poor performers and malcontents. That’s the part that I think players don’t fully grasp. You want to be treated like professionals, fine! There are consequences for that.
You asked me if I think NIL is ruining college sports. I think it’s definitely souring college sports and if this doesn’t become formally regulated, I believe it will turn people away from watching. I’m fed up with the constant transferring and outrageous NIL demands. I don’t want more Nico Iamaleavas popping up throughout college sports. But if regulation doesn’t happen soon, there will be plenty more of them to come. That puts a sport that I love at risk.
If you are in a crowded area with nowhere to go (packed elevator, subway car, etc.) and someone right in front of you has their phone out, is it socially acceptable to look at the phone to see what they are doing on it? And if they notice you looking, are they justified to be upset?
Brian M.
I’d like to focus on the term “socially acceptable” here. There are some things that are just plain right or wrong. But social acceptance is a gray area. It was once legal to smoke on an airplane. That was an obvious wrong that got corrected by the law. Conversely, it was socially unacceptable to dress casually on planes in that same era. But today, the airplane attire standard has changed. You rarely see people in dresses and suits when they fly.
The average American spends about 4.5 hours a day on their smartphone device. Other than perhaps your spouse and a full-time job, our most intimate relationships are with our mobile phones. Have you seen how someone reacts when their phone is snatched away? Mental ward patients show more control and restraint. I would argue that this is morally dubious, but this dynamic became socially accepted a long time ago.
Human beings love gossip. The average person spends 52 minutes a day gossiping with or about someone. It’s part of our human evolution. We’re genetically hardwired to care about others' lives as a survival tactic. Even though gossiping can feel wrong, we can’t help ourselves. This biological desire is the lifeblood of mobile device usage. Everything we engage with on our phones fuels this need. Some gossipers are far more active than others, but we all do it.
In short, sure, it’s rude to snoop. But in packed spaces, curiosity sometimes wins. If you get caught, take the L. That’s the unspoken code of subway phone snooping. But the toothpaste is out of the tube on obnoxious smartphone usage. As much as we’d all like to think we’d survive as luddites, most of us would never last a day or two.
Maybe we’ll look back on this era like we did with smoking: a dangerously addictive drug that was omnipresent until we finally came to our senses. But for now, billions will continue to spend a significant fraction of their lives through mobile phones. And we’ll continue to be intrigued about what people are doing with them. So even though it’s not okay, this is socially accepted and I don’t expect that to change anytime soon.
What’s the latest with Friday Night Beers?
We recently reviewed Gather House and Hitachino Nest Red Rice Ale. With Gather House, we talked about family gatherings, both real and fictional, and picked our favorite homes in movies and television. This Hitachino Nest beer is our second ever Japanese one featured on the show. We dissected mysterious organizations with secret processes and actors who are like sake bombs: they sneak up on you. By the way, we should be announcing a new live event soon. Keep an eye out for that. Please subscribe, rate and review our podcast here and for those who have always been loyal, thanks for your support!
Is Andor one of the greatest Star Wars stories ever?
Against all odds, yes! Andor just wrapped its second and final season on Disney+ and I remain stunned at the series’ greatness. For some context, Andor is about Cassian Andor, a primary character from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. It was impressive enough that Rogue One built a successful movie around one sentence from the opening crawl of Star Wars: A New Hope. The exact sentence reads “rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR.”
Andor takes this premise deeper than the Mariana Trench and it might be as mysteriously intriguing as the bottom of the ocean. Over 24 episodes, Andor offers a grounded approach to the Star Wars universe. It densely analyzes the psychology and consequences of tyranny and insurgencies. We watch as Cassian Andor gradually morphs from an aimless grifter into a fierce leader of the Rebellion against the evil galactic Empire. Along the way, there are dozens of other characters who were unknown footnotes in Star Wars canon that take center stage. It is a testament to the unfathomable scope of this universe that these people played an essential role in the traditional Star Wars tale, but were never known until now.
As a television product, Andor also succeeds as a rollicking, dark espionage thriller. There are heists, ambushes, elaborate schemes and endless shrouds of secrecy behind every corner. This is easily the best dialogue ever written for Star Wars. The performances are so exquisite that Andor occasionally elevates above intergalactic fantasy and into genuine profundity. If you know Star Wars and the events of Rogue One, you already know how it ends. And yet, it gripped me every episode.
It’s a shame that Disney didn’t put this level of craftsmanship into the disastrous sequel film trilogy. Andor is the lone Disney-led Star Wars property that isn’t maniacally obsessed with contrived character cameos and sappy walks down memory lane. There are no Chewbacca fake out deaths in Andor. When people die, they stay dead. It’s a real, hard hitting story. Some Star Wars fans refuse to grow up, but for the adults in the room, Andor is a breath of fresh air. I don’t typically love prequels or television expansions of fringe film characters. But I’m glad I made an exception for Andor, a truly exceptional series that fully capitalizes on the limitless potential of Star Wars in new and exciting ways.
What’s going on with Bill Belichick?
Well, this is not the start that the University of North Carolina envisioned for its new 73-year-old football coach! Over 48 years as a professional football coach, Bill Belichick fiercely commanded NFL players and won eight Super Bowl trophies. Coincidentally, this is one year less than the age gap between Belichick and his girlfriend Jordon Hudson. Bill Belichick, a man born in 1952, is dating a woman who is young enough to be his granddaughter. But that’s just the tip of this iceberg, one that’s hurtling towards the Tar Heels football program like the Titanic.
Arrangements between old rich men and beautiful young women aren’t uncommon, but they are rarely this public. As a head coach, Belichick was famously surly with the sports media complex. He refused to provide anything revealing or interesting with the public and the ballyhooed “Patriot Way” was built off his impenetrable wall of secrecy. Can you imagine THIS explaining to a football fan years ago? How ironic that the master of his domain is being shockingly transparent about his new obsession.
But it gets even weirder than a half-century-sized gap between romantic partners. In addition to being Belichick’s lover, Hudson appears to be his assistant head football coach, social media manager and public relations extraordinaire. According to NBC Sports, Hudson was the reason that HBO scrapped its pitch for a North Carolina-centric Hard Knocks season. While promoting his new autobiography, she was front and center, shutting down journalist Tony Dokoupil when he asked how they met. She continues to act as Belichick’s mouthpiece on social media. For a man who was furiously dedicated to privacy, this is an alarming pivot that doubles to highlight this unbelievably bizarre situation.
Why does any of this matter? Belichick hasn’t even coached a game for North Carolina and the school is already worried about their investment in him. His family hasn’t been shy in voicing their displeasure about this relationship. Hudson was reportedly banned from the athletic facility. This is the biggest self-created mess of Belichick’s career. In two straight hiring cycles, no NFL team wanted Belichick despite his historically strong resume. It’s only natural to see a 73-year-old man’s transformation in his personal life and wonder how it will impact his coaching. If you think I’m being harsh or judgmental, just ask Hudson’s ex-boyfriend, a 64-year-old man named Joshua Zuckerman. You can do the math.
As a longtime New England Patriots hater, I love this. The debate between Tom Brady and Belichick rages on, but Brady can rest knowing that smooching his son is nothing compared to what’s happening in between Belichick and Hudson, who was a baby when they won their first Super Bowl together. I was already skeptical about his fit as a college football coach. This adds an unexpected wrinkle to his debut in Chapel Hill. North Carolina isn’t paying Bill Belichick to have an age appropriate girlfriend. But no matter what happens on the field, this relationship will be repeatedly cited as a significant factor in his success or failure. The questions have only just begun. For the first time in his life, Belichick better have some great answers ready to go.