While the stars collect, they also call shots: within the revolution in the control of the alignment of university football

You know Dylan Stewart better as a defensive that made it possible to play the game which has a chance to finish the season as the best defensive player in the country. The 5-foot 5-inch and 245 pound star had 6.5 bags, 9.5 plated for the loss and 34 quarter-rear as a real recruit, and he has already made comparisons with the former star of Gamecocks Jadeveon Clowney.

But if Stewart will reach its apparently unlimited potential, the genre that former teammate Kyle Kennard dit will do it “A stopwatch in this sport“He knows he needs help.

With rival teams that hung a lot of money to try to leave South Carolina, Stewart was not afraid to be energetic to make sure it was a prior priority for Gamecocks. During the events of an eventful transfer portal, Stewart would appear in the office of Darren Uscher, director of staff and the recruitment of the southern Carolina players, to see who in South Carolina was planning to add to the defensive line. He was in the process of leaning and watching hastily and his team carefully reviewed the film from the defensive line recruits targets.

When Stewart did not like what he saw, the defender generally with a soft voice was not shy to express his feelings.

“If he doesn’t like them, he will let us know,” said Uscher at CBS Sports. “‘This guy cannot play.’ He wants good teammates.

The reasoning is easy to understand, according to Stewart. Even with Kennard – the possible winner of the Nagurski Award as the best defensive player in the country – in front of him last season, Stewart has always faced double teams and even a triple team against Kentucky. Even for a superstar like Stewart, he admits that you cannot do much in this scenario.

“If you just send all your people to one person and you can run your match plan, it’s easy,” says Stewart. “But if you have two guys, you have to understand it.”

Southern Carolina, with series of university football playoffs as a pre-season team n ° 13, listened to the desires of Stewart and added four defensive line players and two rushers on board outside the transfer portal.

Stewart wanting a hand in the players around him is more normal now than you think. In the transfer portal and the Nile era, where the best players earn millions and have more agency than ever, they want a real word in whom else is on the list. We have seen it playing for years at professional levels, from quarters of the NFL like Aaron Rodgers to NBA superstars such as LeBron James, who act as unofficial managing directors to help shape the list.

With the professionalization of university sports, it was only a matter of time before it flowed.

In fact, one of the reasons for the departure of Nico Iamaleava du Tennessee was discomfort on the offensive line and the wide receivers who returned to Knoxville this season. The Iamaleava camp, who included his father Nic and his friend of the Cordell Landers family, wanted Tennessee to be more aggressive to add players to help the quarter. After a season that ended in the Iamaleava helmet, cracking twice against Ohio State in the university football playoffs, the advisers of Iamaleava wanted a better offensive line to protect it. There was also frustration this spring on a large receiver room which was now without Bru McCoy and Don’e Thornton Jr.

Of course, this same camp also wanted Tennessee considerably to increase its compensation for Nico, said sources at CBS Sports, a request that was ultimately rejected.

Iamaleava was to win about 2.4 million dollars this season, and after several offseason titles on the best quarters such as Carson Beck of Miami and Darian Mensah of Duke considerably overshadow this number, the people of the quarter of Tennessee thought that he deserved more. It was previously reported that they wanted something in the range of $ 4 million, although Darren Heitner, an eminent sports lawyer who had conversations with the Iamaleava camp during the saga, thinks that the demand was in fact 6 to 8 million dollars. Sources think that Tennessee was willing to go to the range of $ 3 million, but never was going to get closer to these bizarre requests.

The Iamaleava camp was convinced that it would be able to earn more than $ 4 million on the free market, although Tennessee in the spring has considerably limited the pool of potential contenders and has lowered its value. Iamaleava finally left for the UCLA and should do less this season in Los Angeles than he could have stayed in Knoxville. People around Iamaleava have always denied that it was money – sources around Tennessee, of course, say the opposite – and that it was surrounding talent. Iamaleava, in its first public comments in July, told CBS Sports: “My family was strictly the main importance for me. I left my sales team, my parents, managing this side of Nile. Just me closer to the family was the most important thing.”

While Aumaleava has become the child of the poster for Nile Gone Bad in some respects, his non -financial requests made sense.

“All the big quarters of the colleges we have seen in the past, they have all had an excellent support cast,” the quarterrier of Indiana Fernando Mendoza told CBS Sports. “Although there are a lot of images and attention to the quarter, it’s not an individual program. It’s really a game of 11 people.”

In a strange touch of fate, one of the quarters of Tennessee was interested in adding to replace Iamaleava had gone through a similar exercise itself for months earlier.

Several schools, some of which within the dry, were interested in poaching Luke Altmyer far from Illinois. The native of the Mississippi had started his career in Ole Miss, so he was familiar with the dry and came out of his best season to date to guide the illini fights to a 10-3 file. He launched for 2,717 yards, 22 affected and only six interceptions.

As an altmyer weighed his options, He had three questions for the Illinois coach, Bret Bielema: 1) Did the offensive coordinator Barry Lunney Jr. came back? 2) What role did the assistant coach Art Sitkowski in 2025? 3) Who would be the offensive line and the wide receivers for him in 2025?

The receiver position was a huge question after the Illinois lost its two best receivers, Pat Bryant and Zakhari Franklin, from last year’s team. Bryant, in particular, had a significant impact on the program and was responsible for three winners.

Altmyer’s questions did not offend Bielema. After stays with the New York Giants and the Patriots from New England before coming to Illinois, he thinks that his senior quarter-arre is ahead of the curve.

“A good quarterly knows that he is built by protection in front of him and the talent he has around him,” said Bielema. “… that checks even more in my opinion. He is a academic player who plays like an NFL player as he thinks, the way he is preparing.”

Altmyer says that he was strongly involved in their recent recruitment of receivers, to meet players during their visits to send messages to the director general Pat Embeton to ensure that Illinois is involved with the players he thinks of need. If he was going to stay in Illinois, a place which, according to him, can compete with the highest level this season, he wanted to make sure that he was doing everything he could to happen.

Given the importance of the quarter position, having an actively involved altmyer was essential for Illinois this offseason. After a formidable season of 2024 and with Hope Building for what could be accomplished in 2025, the Illinois knew that he had to do everything he could to keep Altmyer happy. The Illinois finally added the transfer of Virginie-Western Hudson Clement and the transfer of Ball Staten Bowick, which should all be contributors to the receiver this season.

“They know that I have a different perspective being a quarter-arre that makes the rooms and on the field,” explains Altmyer. “So, I am strongly involved in the world of social media, and they send me players of players and being in some of these meetings such as:” Hey, what do you think of this guy compared to this guy? “It’s crazy, but it’s very fun.”

Not all players have the cachet to want or have their say to shape the list, but it is an advantage that schools can deploy to keep their players star on the list. The acquisition of players attracts the most attention to university football now, but the retention of players is even more important, especially for programs focused on the development of local talents. The money will always be critical, but knowing your voice is important enough to have an impact on what your program wants to do in its list construction could be the tipping point for the stay. This could ultimately save money from programs too, keep players on agreements relatively suitable for teams in relation to having to fill the critical positions thanks to the free agency where requests are high and the discounts are practically nonexistent.

For Altmyer, having his say on his teammates for his last season was a reason why he knew that Champaign was where he was to be in 2025.

“There is a great risk to collect and go somewhere that is uncertain for a team that needs a quarter-rear and does not have many good players around it,” said Altmyer. “I am comfortable here because I know what surrounds me, I know the trajectory, I know the people around me and I know where we can go.”