Schools waiting for Nico Iamaleava to drop NIL demands: report

Nico Iamaleava’s plan to get more NIL money than he was being paid at Tennessee could backfire as other schools may not be interested in making a big investment in the quarterback.

Multiple reports now suggest that the interest in Iamaleava is more limited than was originally thought, and that schools are waiting to see if his demands come down in the next few days.

Several schools are interested in Iamaleava, but only if he’s open to a deal worth around $1 million, according to a report from On3 Sports’ Pete Nakos.

That would be a serious discount for a quarterback who was looking for a big raise.

Iamaleava, who was getting a reported $2.4 million from the Volunteers, was hoping to secure a package from the Vols worth around $4 million to bring himself in line with the perceived market value for quarterbacks.

But the logistics of adding a would-be starting quarterback this late in the offseason might present too great a risk for many programs to bring him on.

Iamaleava would still have to earn the starting job, get the confidence of his locker room, acclimate himself to a new crop of receivers, and do so on a team that gives him the platform to show enough progress to maintain or improve his eventual NFL Draft stock.

Those considerable risks could prevent schools from making the kind of investment in Iamaleava that he’s interested in getting and that inspired him to leave a starting role at Tennessee.

It was there he already had a starting position, a talented group of wide receivers, and some momentum after leading one of the SEC’s more productive offenses.

The situation sheds light on a new fact of life in college football’s NIL era, that a player may think he has more leverage than he has, and will walk out of a sure thing in the hopes of getting a guarantee somewhere else that doesn’t really exist.

Right now, it appears Iamaleava has walked away from considerable money that he already had his hands on and that he might not see again.

After his bombshell decision to abandon the Vols in search of a better deal somewhere else, we’ll see if his gamble pays off as the transfer portal opens up on Wednesday.

Read