Former Vols walk-on WR has gotten himself into some extremely hot water

AtoZ Sports

Lucas Panzica discusses how former walk-on wide receiver Grant Frerking has recently gotten himself into deep trouble and talks about the repercussions the Tennessee Vols football team could face through the NCAA

Transcript

00:00There is a crazy story going around about a former Tennessee football player in the college football

00:04landscape, but how does it affect the program? We'll fill you in in a moment.

00:12Hey, Lucas Panzeke here from 104.5 The Zone and A to Z Sports. If you are a Tennessee football fan,

00:17you may or may not know the name Grant Firking, who was a former Tennessee football walk-on at

00:23the wide receiver position. Well, Firking has been in the news for the wrong reasons as of late. Now,

00:29let's go back. He arrived at Tennessee in the Butch Jones era, stuck around through Jeremy

00:35Pruitt and in the early stages of the Josh Heupel era as a walk-on wide receiver. Now,

00:40he's a player that garnered a lot of attention because he was a walk-on that was also an

00:44entrepreneur, founding the company Metro Straw, a pine straw delivery service in the state of Georgia

00:51that was a very successful company. And right as name, image, and likeness took hold in college

00:56football, suddenly Grant Firking became one of the faces of NIL as a student athlete who was

01:03successfully running a company during his time as a football player at the University of Tennessee.

01:08It got to the point where after he graduated, he was a very front-facing figure in the media as well

01:14on the name, image, and likeness front with several appearances on the Paul Feinbaum show

01:18and became an employee of On3 Sports. Firking did a lot of consulting work as well

01:24with the football program, staying very involved with Josh Heupel and Danny White and how Tennessee

01:29handled its NIL dealings. Well, now there has been reporting done by the Knoxville News Sentinel,

01:35Adam Sparks, Tyler Whetstone, and Mike Wilson about Grant Firking and some of the issues that he has

01:41run into in recent months. Apparently, according to the article, Firking has not been with the company

01:47MetroStraw for quite some time now. Yet, he has, as recently as this past spring, acted as though he

01:54was a part of that company and has taken money from clients without delivering the goods and services

01:59that MetroStraw delivers, to the point where the company had to post a warning on its website

02:05warning potential clients that Firking is no longer associated with MetroStraw. He also worked for

02:12On3 Sports and has since been let go of On3 Sports. As founder of On3, Shannon Terry came out with a

02:18statement saying that he was not aware that Firking was still consulting with the University of Tennessee's

02:24football program, which he was instructed not to do as an employee of On3 Sports. He's even run up a

02:31bill of over $16,000 with local apartments in the Nashville area and has been evicted from those

02:38apartments for unpaid rent, according to the article. So, Grant Firking, once one of the front-facing

02:44figures of name, image, and likeness, an entrepreneur and student-athlete, has now garnered the reputation

02:49of being a con artist and is in the media for all the wrong reasons. Does it mean anything for the

02:54University of Tennessee and its football program? I'd say right now, no, other than it's not a great look

03:00that he has been as involved as he was with the program. In terms of any legal ramifications,

03:06that would only be on Firking's side with unpaid bills to apartment complexes and potentially

03:11getting money from clients that he does not then deliver on, pretending to be part of a company

03:16he is no longer a part of. And there are no NCAA violations or laws that say the University of

03:22Tennessee cannot associate with a former player that also runs a business. But again, it's not

03:27necessarily a great look. From the On3 Sports perspective, it is an in-house rule for On3 Sports

03:34that their employees cannot be working directly with these football programs, which makes sense

03:39for a journalistic institution. So any reason why he would have gotten booted from On3 Sports

03:44would have been due to their in-house policy. So Tennessee is not susceptible to any legal

03:49ramifications or NCAA ramifications here, but it's not a great look for the Vols. And it is indeed a crazy

03:55story for a guy who once was thought to be a very positive light in this new world of NIL.

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