GELNN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
Former Tennessee quarterback Nico Iamaleava – pronounced Eee-Ah-MAH-LAY-ah-va, and not to be confused with former LSU athletic director Joe Alleva – obviously did not have Tennessee graduate and super agent Jimmy Sexton representing him during his Iam-An-Idiot spring game, NIL holdout last month.
He also didn’t have Jerry Maguire.
No, Iamaleava’s dad Nic represented him. He’s not an agent. He’s not a lawyer, though that’s not always a bad thing. And he knew not what he was doing, despite some help from yet another ill-advising lawyer. Dorothy Maguire’s son Ray could’ve done better.
Iamaleava had already made $6 million from Tennessee’s various NIL sources and was scheduled to make $2.2 million in the third year of the contract in 2025 as a redshirt sophomore starting quarterback.
The Iamaleavas reportedly demanded $4 million for Nico for next season, which is what experienced senior Carson Beck is getting from Miami after transferring from Georgia after 2024. Beck was one of the nation’s top quarterbacks the last two years, going 24-3 and throwing for 7,912 yards. Iamaleava was average at best last season in his first as a starter.
Iamaleava then stupidly sat out a practice and the spring game to prove he meant business. Since when are spring games seen as a bargaining chip? In fact, many schools are cashing in their spring games for scrimmages, which should have been done decades ago.
Iamaleava’s ploy was about as good as his play in Tennessee’s 42-17 playoff loss to Ohio State last season – 14-of-31 passing for 104 yards – when the Vols looked less deserving of a playoff bid than the programs everyone was incorrectly whining about for making it (SMU, Arizona State, Indiana and Boise State).
And Tennessee coach Josh Heupel showed some refreshing guts and told Iamaleava to go ahead and leava.
Now, Iamaleava is scheduled to make $1.5 million at his new school, UCLA, reported Front Office Sports. Actually, less as California has one of the most expensive state income tax systems. Tennessee – in case the Iamaleavas didn’t check – has no state income tax.
Basically, Iamaleava’s “representation” staged a reboot of the classic “Naked Gun” reverse bribery scene.
Plus, UCLA is more volleyball school than football factory. The Bruins last won a Pac-12 football title in 1998, and now it’s in the all-powerful Big Ten – you know, what the SEC used to be. UCLA’s 5-7 mark last year was its fifth losing season of eight. Its last 10-win season was in 2014.
And Iamaleava’s new coach, DeShaun Foster, was a graduate assistant just 10 years ago. His biggest job before becoming UCLA’s head coach last year was running backs coach.
Iamaleava left one of the nation’s brightest offensive minds in Heupel, who enters his fifth season with the Vols in 2025 after three at Central Florida.
Great for Heupel, who told the Iamaleavas what they can do. Only problem was it left him without a quarterback, other than redshirt freshman Jake Merklinger, who completed 6 of 9 for 48 yards last season.
Serves Tennessee right, though, because it should have received major sanctions from the NCAA for the way it got Iamaleava in the first place. But the Tennessee attorney general with an assist from the Virginia attorney general and a court ruling took advantage of the trending and often misplaced hate of the NCAA and stopped an NCAA investigation. And let everyone go free.
So, Heupel noticed that UCLA has a new incoming quarterback named Iamaleava and got UCLA’s projected starting quarterback pre-Iamaleava to transfer to him. That is senior Joey Aguilar, who was Appalachian State’s starter in 2023 and ’24 and had transferred to UCLA last December. Before that, he played at a place called Diablo Valley in 2021 and ’22. And he doesn’t get to Knoxville until June.
Coming out of high school, Aguilar would have never been recruited by Tennessee. He wasn’t even ranked. In this portal age, major programs often take a transfer from a lesser program that it would have never recruited out of high school in the first place. Ah, the magic of the NCAA Backup Portal. At least, Tennessee got him at a $1.2 million discount.
What a joke college football has become. Its rush to start NIL and the immediate Transfer Portal at the same time in 2021 created the Curious Case of Nico Iamaleava.
Iamaleava asking for $4 million from Tennessee is as ridiculous as another Naked Gun sequel. He finished No. 57 in passing yards last season with 2,616 and No. 42 in TD passes with 19. LSU’s Garrett Nussmeier, meanwhile, was fifth in passing yards with 4,052 and No. 10 in TD passes with 29.
Nussmeier just got a raise and makes approximately $1.2 million and is clearly much better than Nico. So, if Tennessee had paid Iamaleava $4 million, surely Nussmeier could have asked for a $5 or $6 million, based on comparisons.
“It’s pretty nuts,” LSU baseball coach Jay Johnson said. “It’s wild.”
But based on the lack of any organization back in 2021 when all this crap started, not surprising.
“This is the natural course when there weren’t many guidelines out there,” LSU coach Brian Kelly said. “We’re going to see a lot of this. I think there’s going to be other situations that come.”
Unless, the House Settlement truly does change things.
“The House Settlement is coming close that will most likely bring us some form of revenue sharing,” Kelly said. “There’s changes coming in NIL. I think there’s going to be better information out there that will allow people to look at comparisons (of pay to athletes as in the NFL) for positions and say, ‘That makes sense. That doesn’t make sense.'”
The Iamaleavas made no sense.
“It (revenue sharing and some guidelines) will allow us to navigate a lot more reasonably, moving forward,” Kelly said. “People can make decisions. If you want to pay X (for a QB), then that’s what you can do. With the House settlement and potentially a clearinghouse for NIL, we’ll see a better place as we move forward.”
In the meantime on this birthday of William Shakespeare (April 23, 1564), “Let’s Kill All The Lawyers.”
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