The Internet Can’t Stop Laughing After QB Nico Iamaleava Will Reportedly Sign With UCLA For Just $1 Million After Demanding $4 Million From Tennessee

Aaron Ryan·
CULTURESPORTS
·
Nico Iamaleava Tennessee
Tim Gangloff/Cal Sport Media via Alamy

Guessing the negotiations didn’t go like he thought they would…

It may be the offseason for college football but there’s still been plenty to talk about these past few days after this new era of NIL (name, image and likeness) gave us our first known college football holdout.

Last week, On3 Sports reported that now-former University of Tennessee quarterback Nico Iamaleava was seeking to renegotiate his $2+ million NIL deal with the Volunteers, reportedly demanding $4 million to stay in Knoxville. Iamaleava’s father, who is apparently acting as his representative, quickly denied the report (and called the reporter a “bitch”), but the next day the QB was a no-show at practice the day before the team’s spring game.

Iamaleava reportedly ghosted his team and coaches, and the next day Coach Josh Heupel announced that the team would be going in a different direction at QB and parting ways with Nico.

Since then, there’s been a lot of discussion about where he would land and just how much he would get paid, with his father telling Blue Bloods Bias that his son had offers in excess of the $4 million he was seeking from Tennessee.

But it seems like over the past few days his options have narrowed greatly. At one point it was reported that Tulane and UNC were interested in Iamaleava, and the Green Wave reportedly even made him an offer, but yesterday On3 reported that they too had dropped out and would be going in a different direction.

With most of his options gone, UCLA seemed to emerge as the only possible landing spot for the junior quarterback. And today it was reported that he would indeed be joining the Bruins in the fall – but that he wouldn’t be getting his $4 million per year payday:

Now obviously we don’t know whether those numbers are accurate, but common sense would tell us that SEC blue blood Tennessee, who made the College Football Playoffs last year, is able to spend a lot more on their players than a school like UCLA that’s not exactly a football powerhouse.

Nico’s family continues to insist that his departure from Tennessee “wasn’t about the money” and was more about the Vols’ offense, but…well, UCLA doesn’t exactly light up the field on offense:

It sure sounds like Nico got some bad advice and was told that he was worth more than he really was in the transfer portal, but who knows. And there may be performance-based incentives in his new deal that would increase his payout if UCLA makes the playoffs, but do we really think that’s likely?

Either way, folks can’t help but laugh at the fact that not only will Nico reportedly not be getting the $4 million his people were demanding, but it sounds like he’s actually going to be taking a pretty significant cut from what he was getting at Tennessee – not to mention the fact that the state of Tennessee doesn’t have an income tax:

Now, some reports claim that it wasn’t the quality of the offense but the scheme that Tennessee runs that Nico(‘s father) had a problem with.

But regardless, you’ve got to think that Nico would have had a better shot at making the NFL and continuing his football career at a school like Tennessee and not UCLA (which hasn’t had a QB drafted since Josh Rosen back in 2018).

Either way, it sounds like the QB has found a new home. Whether it will be a risk that pays off in the long run is yet to be seen.

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