Nico Iamaleava Shouldn't Have Held Out for $4M

The immediate temptation, on reading all this drama around former Tennessee (and future UCLA?) quarterback Nico Iamaleava, is to dunk on the dude. And I don’t think it would be a fair reading of this situation not to criticize the way this has played out and how that reflects on him and his family’s negotiating chops.

Since almost everything we’re dealing with is hearsay, I should also note upfront that what I’m about to say is based on this one central assumption, as has been widely reported: that Iamaleava asked for more money from Tennessee, somewhere on the order of $4M. And that’s up from $2.4M, which would amount to a nice little 66% raise. Bold. I’ll let you know the next time I pull that off.

If we’re taking that as true, then the following, in my opinion, is also true. At present, he’s not worth $4M and probably should’ve known that.

People have been asking where the ceiling is on NIL, and I think we just found at least one. A relatively top-flight SEC school like Tennessee, which made the (expanded) Playoff last year, is not going to shell out unlimited amounts of money to accommodate a player that they’re not even sure can lead them to success.

And you wouldn’t be sure, if you’re head coach Josh Heupel, who just watched Iamaleava underperform against every good team on their schedule. He did most of his damage against Chattanooga, Kent State, and UTEP. They weren’t a bad team, but they weren’t a great one, and we saw that when they ran into a wall against Ohio State — who, lest we all forget, was absolutely reeling prior to that.¹ Some people picked Tennessee on that basis. They were mistaken.

It wasn’t pretty. Yeah, he ran for two short touchdowns, but those 47 yards came on 20 attempts, and the second one made it 42-17 with 2:00 left. As for his passing, he went 14/31 for 104 yards. Yikes.

So yeah, I say all that not to be mean-spirited, just to say that if anyone were going to try and pull off a pretty audacious ask like the one quoted above — $4M — it’d have to be someone who was more clearly worth it.

Because there’s no clear data on this, it’s hard to say where exactly that would situate among the best players in the sport. According to On3, which, again, is less than solid as databases go, that’d place him as the third-ranked QB in college football, behind only Arch Manning at Texas and Carson Beck at Miami (who I don’t think is all that good, FWIW, but did outplay and soundly beat Iamalavea when he was at Georgia last year).

And look, I’m sure he does feel that way, that he’s right in that top tier and he should be paid accordingly. But what has happened here, IMO, is not that complicated. When he was a highly touted high school prospect, he signed a long-running deal that was worth upwards of $8M in all. At the time, that was a historic sum, based on his potential performance in college.

Now that we’re looking at actual performance in the SEC, albeit as a freshman, everyone’s a little less sure. The additional reports, that Iamalavea wasn’t exactly a dream to work with in terms of sponsorship appearances, etc., feed an impression of someone who might have just gone into this offseason a little too cocky.

I’m not going to sit here and cast judgment on the guy’s character. I don’t know him, and most of the people writing articles about him don’t either. Many things could be true. He could look back on this as a mistake later. This could all be more of a misunderstanding than it looks right now. Maybe there were promises made that weren’t kept. Maybe him and the coaching staff just never gelled. This kind of stuff is only rarely one-way, so I note all that not to muddy the waters so much as to better approximate the truth of what probably happened here. Unless this guy is just the absolute worst, there’s almost always more to it.

I also don’t know his father, Nic, who appears to be a main character in this whole saga, nor do I know exactly what he said or did. I’m willing to believe the reports that he tried to renegotiate his son’s NIL contract back in December, as well as the reports that that didn’t work. (Because, well, duh. If they’d gotten a new contract then, Nico would still be at Tennessee.)

If all that’s true, then he wouldn’t be the first parent who’s done this. History is crowded with examples of this going wrong, as well as plenty examples of it going right. You’re allowed to advocate for your son. You’d do the same. You might not ask for an extra $1.6M after a pretty pedestrian season, but one should also point out that he probably had at least this level of involvement in signing the original $8M+ deal before his son had ever taken a college snap. Maybe that’s what leads someone to get a little too confident that they can get the bag again.

With all this going on, I’ve heard some people go back to the well on an old line we used to hear in the old days. This was first used as a reason not to pay college athletes at all, mind you. The argument goes like this:

These are just kids we’re talking about. They can’t be trusted with this kind of money. We remember when we were 18, don’t we? We’d have blown it all on beer!

The new addition is:

Fine, let’s pay them, but this money should be put in a trust until they’re grown up. It’s for their own good. That way, they can’t do anything stupid.

While I get that instinct, and we have all known/been dumbass college students, I can’t say I agree. It strikes me as a losing argument for not paying college athletes — actually paying them, not paying them with strings attached — that some of them might then squander that money. Yes, they might. So do professional athletes, and musicians, and actors, and other adults in every industry and every country in existence. Maybe this is me at my most libertarian, but I don’t think I believe in that. And I don’t think you would either if we took that argument to its logical conclusion.

There’s no age limit on having a #1 single, or starring in a TV show, or inventing some innovative new technology. We’ve seen those sorts of situations end poorly, yes. 100% agreed. We’ve also seen situations where people are “taken care of” end poorly too. (#FreeBritney)

What I’m saying is: paternalistically withholding money, on the basis that college athletes need to be protected from themselves, verges too far in the wrong direction. The old direction. Which we left for a reason.

And need I remind everyone, we allow incoming college students to sign themselves up for a lifetime of debt in order to afford a degree. At the same age, you can also vote and enlist in the military. None of these are small decisions, and our society has decided — yes, arbitrarily — that 18 is the age at which you’re entitled to make them.

On that basis alone, it doesn’t hold water for me. (And besides, this may not be true in college football, where you typically need to play 3 years before going to the NFL, but most NBA-bound college hoopers are in the league by age 18 or 19 anyways. So if it’s not a problem there, why would it be a problem here?)

Nico Iamaleava already has money. More than the incredibly overwhelming majority of people will ever make in a year’s work. He will almost definitely be making less this year, having left what may, at least financially, have been a better spot for him than he seems to have realized. I don’t know what his NFL future holds, if anything. It could’ve all peaked with that one year in Tennessee. Who knows.

I’m going to choose not to root for that. Not because I think he’s awesome, or I really love his vibe, or whatever. And this is a part of being a fan of sports or anything else, so I get it. But it’s always a little sad to me when everyone collectively decides that “This guy’s an idiot!!!” and that becomes, in effect, the news cycle. He who fumbleth the bag shall allow the masses to revel in his misfortune… th.

I suspect that’s a bummer, so I’ll spare him the additional hate. You know, apart from the above, which I prefer to think of as “telling it like it is.” I think that phrase has been coopted these days, but if I can take it back for just a moment, I’d like to tell this like it is: this case does not mean the sport is broken, just as the Jaden Rashada case didn’t either.

This is a market that’s still figuring itself out, and by the looks of the House settlement these days, it’s gonna take some time. I will be giving it that time, and I won’t be panicking in the interim.

⛳ I am not a huge golf guy. Don’t tell my buddies Bryn or Thomas that, but I’m not. I’m sorry! It’s just not for me, and that’s okay. However. Everyone should save a special place in their heart for Sunday at the Masters, and watching Rory damn near fuck it up again, only to then get it done in the playoff, was a special kind of cathartic. I don’t care how much you didn’t want him to win. If you can’t be happy for somebody who looks that relieved, after winning on that kind of stage, then you might have a hole in your heart where the aforementioned special place for Sunday at the Masters should’ve been. Replace that.

🏀 NBA playoff picks! Give me the Bucks, the Knicks, the Lakers, and… the Clippers? No, I can’t do it. The Nuggets. I don’t think they have enough to get all the way, but I’ll give them a round. Thunder, regardless of opponent, and Cavs, regardless of opponent. Then the Celtics, and… man. The Rockets? I guess so, fellas. I guess so. Know that I want to pick the Warriors. I’m just not right now. I reserve the right to change my mind! But for now, that’s where we’re looking.

⚾ And finally, last night, we made a triumphant return to Citi Field. Well, not triumphant in the winning the game sense, but we did have a hotdog. Go Cards.

1. I wrote about it!