Former Vols OC Alex Golesh makes strong statement about the way Tennessee HC Josh Heupel handles NIL in the locker room

Heupel and his staff at Tennessee have certainly taken a unique approach to the NCAA transfer portal. 

Tennessee isn't taking the Clemson approach and completely ignoring the portal. Nor are they taking the Ole Miss/Colorado approach and just throwing large amounts of cash at every "elite" player that enters the portal. 

Instead, Heupel and his staff are putting Tennessee's culture first. They're willing to utilize the portal -- the Vols have had numerous key transfer contributors over the last three seasons (Hendon Hooker, John Campbell, and Bru McCoy to name a few) -- but not at the expense of the program's culture. That's why there are quite a few extremely talented players that have entered the portal that haven't received much (if any) interest from the Vols. 

And that's just the start of managing NIL as a head coach. The most important aspect, which is what Golesh was illustrating, is managing NIL within your own locker room. Not every player is earning the same amount of cash. And that can be problematic. But Heupel, based on Golesh's comments, has found the perfect way to manage Tennessee's locker room and keep NIL from becoming something that fractures the culture in Knoxville. 

Alex Golesh initially planned to stay at Tennessee before leaving for USF

Golesh also revealed during his interview with Breneman that he initially planned to stay at Tennessee before accepting the USF job after the 2022 regular season. 

"To be honest with you, I think maybe even as late as Thursday night of that week, we had made a decision that we were going to stay," said Golesh. "We're going to stay in Knoxville. We loved our time, we loved the city, I loved working with Josh. I loved the staff we built. I loved the players. We were doing something incredible there that hadn't been done there in a while. 

"It was really that Friday morning when they called here and said 'hey, we want to come up to Knoxville and sit down and talk through this'. And I thought I'd have a night and they said you've got an hour." 

Golesh mentioned several times during the interview that he wasn't chasing a head coaching job. Instead, he was focused on getting the job done at Tennessee (which he did...the Vols had the best offense in the nation under Golesh). The opportunity at USF was simply too good to pass up. 

And you can certainly understand why -- there aren't many people on the planet that are going to turn down a raise and the opportunity to live in Tampa.