So it looks like UCLA got its Iamaleava, after all. And with him, college football’s attention.
Quarterback Nico Iamaleava, a rising redshirt sophomore, is expected to transfer to UCLA after leaving Tennessee over a contract dispute, per multiple reports Wednesday.
He’ll slot in where his younger brother, Madden, was supposed to before abruptly changing his commitment last year to sign with Arkansas.
Fast forward and it’s Nico Iamaleava changing course, charting a path to Westwood, and arriving as the protagonist in college football’s movie of the week: Unthinkable until only recently, he was the college quarterback effectively holding out, no-showing for practices and meetings because he reportedly wanted his program to meet demands to increase his NIL deal from $2.4 million to $4 million.
But that program, Tennessee, balked and walked away, leaving Iamaleava – who passed for 2,616 yards, 19 touchdowns and five interceptions last season – looking for a new home … closer to home, it turned out.
And, reportedly, for far less than his $4 million asking price.
In the moment, the Iamaleava saga is widely being told as a cautionary tale – but what if, later, we remember it as a fairy tale?
Imagine: Long Beach native returns home to lead the UCLA football team to Big Ten success. Rides off into the sunset as a winner, having propelled coach DeShaun Foster’s team toward national relevance. Enters the transfer portal again in 2026, ready to get paid for real.
I mean, this is college sports. Gotta take it one game, one step – and, at the most, one season at a time. As long as the portal is open for business with no expiration date on exchanges, let’s just assume it’ll keep pulling contract pass-slingers like Iamaleava back into it season after season. Or at least tempting them.
The best-case scenario for UCLA now is that Iamaleava uses this upcoming season to disprove all the doubters who panned him for having the audacity to make such a big ask, so boldly.
As if that wasn’t the natural progression of things, to have a highly touted quarterback like Iamaleava taking a shot downfield to test an unregulated market.
Now we know, it seems, where Tennessee draws the line. At least for a quarterback who last year struggled in many of the Volunteers’ bigger SEC matchups and who passed for more than 200 yards in a game just twice.
And if he finds a groove back out west, I wouldn’t expect Iamaleava – who started his high school career at Long Beach Poly, transferred to Warren for two years, and then enrolled back at Poly before returning instead to Warren as a senior – not to toe the line again, as soon as he’s able. If he’s able.
But live for the moment, UCLA. The Bruins just wound up with the No. 1 overall transfer, the former top-ranked overall recruit by On3 out of high school, a 6-foot-6 dual threat who led a marquee SEC team to the College Football Playoff as a freshman.
And, if all the reports are to be believed, the Bruins got him at a bargain price – at least relative to what he was asking from his former program a week ago.
Not bad for a Bruins program that finished 5-7 last season and that has played in just two bowls – the L.A. and the Sun – in the past seven years. That was going to hand its offensive reins to Appalachian State transfer Joey Aguilar.
A program that just hired Tino Sunseri as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach to replace former Kansas City Chiefs and Washington Football Team offensive coordinator Eric Bieniem, who was let go after the Bruins’ offense ranked 95th in the nation for yards per play.
A program that – like its new quarterback Iamaleava – goes into Year 2 of the Foster Era with plenty to prove. For instance, that UCLA can be a destination for embattled quarterbacks to rebound, that can be a stepping stone to greater things.
And then, maybe, eventually, the destination? A place where a top-end quarterback would want to play out all his college days, portal be damned.
But what if this season doesn’t end happily ever for Iamaleava and the Bruins? Then we’ll know Tennessee was probably right to walk away from the table.
And that everyone else probably was right too, if they were among those who applauded the Vols, or who didn’t like a 20-year-old asking for millions of dollars more, or who wanted to see Iamaleava knocked down a couple million pegs for putting himself so far above his team.
It’ll mean that Iamaleava did not, in fact, deserve to make as much as NFL veterans such as, say, Andy Dalton and Jameis Winston. But also that UCLA is not that place, not a program equipped to effectively facilitate the image rehabilitation of a quarterback under pressure.
It’ll mean, quite possibly, that Iamaleava would turn to the transfer portal again in 2026, on the hunt again for a job with better prospects and better pay.
Either way, there might be no avoiding that. I mean, this is college sports!
But for Bruins’ fans sake, if in a year, the portal’s pull proves too much for Iamaleava to resist, I hope they’re sad they’re losing a star who’s looking for a promotion and not glad their new quarterback is going and hoping for an upgrade to the upgrade that tumbled into their laps this season.
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