Iamaleava's option play takes a loss

The ex-Tennessee quarterback learns the rough edges of college football's new world.

Nico Iamaleava

Everybody says college football has become pro football without a speed limit these days. Unfortunately for Nico Iamaleava, he believed it.

The Tennessee quarterback felt he wasn’t making enough money. His contract was paying him $2 million a year. He figured he could renegotiate that. Isn’t that what the pros do? Amid the process, he contacted Oregon in search of leverage. The Ducks offered none.

Next for Iamaleava was a holdout. Again, that’s what the pro quarterbacks do. He skipped a session of spring practice and failed to communicate with the Tennessee coaching staff. But Josh Heupel, the Tennessee coach, knows it’s not pro football. When it became clear that Iamaleava was interested in games other than college football, Heupel announced that the program had “moved on” from their quarterback who, among other things, was the MVP of the Citrus Bowl two seasons ago, directed wins over Alabama and Florida in ‘24, and helped the Volunteers go 10-3 and reach the College Football Playoff, at least for a couple of minutes.

“I said to the guys today that there’s nobody who’s bigger than the Power T and that includes me,” Heupel said.

Iamaleava was reportedly aiming for a $4 million haul. As Miami’s Mario Cristobal and other coaches hailed Heupel’s dig-in, Iamaleava was checking out his transfer portal options and, as of Wednesday, seemed to have settled on UCLA. He won’t be getting $4 million there, but he will be closer to his home. He played high school football at Warren High in Downey, Ca., and then Long Beach Poly. Even though he’s gotten through the daily inquisition that is SEC football, he’ll be working under a merciless lens at UCLA, as he girds for Big 10 travel, competition and weather, and deals with fans all over the sport who can’t wait for him to fail.

Iamaleava’s family and friends say he didn’t leave Tennessee because of money, but because of the lack of protection and dynamic teammates. He was sacked 28 times last season. But the Vols did average 35 points a game with those pedestrian playmakers, and most of the quarterbacks Heupel has coached at Tennessee and South Florida have put up better numbers than Iamaleava.

It was a case of awkward management by the quarterback, who could have transferred much earlier and found a more comfortable slot, but it was, and is, a case of potential disaster for Tennessee, which has two quarterbacks on its roster.

But what if this really was the NFL, and should that be the model for whatever college football becomes?

First, Iamaleava would have no options as a pro. He would be drafted. Uncomfortable with the coach, the city, the players on hand? Deal with it. First-round picks sign entry-level contracts that last four years, and the club has an option on a fifth. And the salary, although certainly high enough for sustenance, would be low enough to accommodate the salary cap. NFL owners love cheap young quarterbacks even more than tax breaks.

Even after those five years, Iamaleava wouldn’t necessarily get to pick and choose his market. His original team could hang a franchise tag on him, meaning he would either make the average of the 10 richest players at his position, or the average of the top five players at his position over the past five years, but he’d have to stay home.

The money wouldn’t be fully guaranteed, either, not unless Iamaleava was so impactful that he could command it. Lamar Jackson signed a $260 million deal over five years, and $180 million of that was guaranteed.

And at some point, management would come to Iamaleava and ask him to rescue them for their salary-cap mistakes. How about “restructuring” your deal so we can make sure you’ve got ambulatory receivers? Patrick Mahomes agrees to such renegotiations, so everyone else does too.

Eventually college football will get there. You’ve noticed the term “general manager” coming up here and there. Andrew Luck is Stanford’s general manager. Michael Lombardi, a former NFL GM, is doing that job for Bill Belichick at North Carolina. The GM is in charge of sifting through the impossible mountain of transferring talent. He has to pick and choose the keepers on his own roster. And when college football does install a salary cap, he’ll have to deal with whatever gimmicks and qualifiers are written into the document.

(He or she, rather. The general manager of Duke basketball is Rachel Baker.)

Have the scales fallen from our eyes? Let’s hope so. Instead of recruiting high school players, let’s have a draft. Go as many rounds as you need. Round up the SEC, Big 10, Big 12 and ACC schools, plus Notre Dame. Turn it into the type of throbbing extravaganza that the NFL draft has become.

Having trouble signing one of your playmakers? Trade him. Trade him for one or two of those draft picks or for somebody else’s problem. That shouldn’t be difficult to accept. Georgia has Alabama transfers and vice versa. Alabama basketball had an Auburn transfer.

If you’re concerned about the undrafted players, don’t be. They’ll go to the Mountain West, the American Athletic, the other FBS leagues and the South Dakota States as well. And the general managers and their scouts will be taping every one of those games and watching them well into the night. They’ll sign the best of them. A less structured version of that is happening now.

And Nico Iamaleava will no longer wear the Power T. As he moves inexorably toward the real business, he’ll miss the power more than the T.