Nico Iamaleava negotiations: Timing, reason behind Tennessee QB's holdout explained

One day before Tennessee’s Orange and White spring game, quarterback Nico Iamaleava wasn’t at practice, VolQuest’s Austin Price reported. His absence comes with the backdrop of NIL negotiations, as On3’s Pete Nakos reported Thursday evening.

As for the timing and reason for the apparent holdout, ESPN’s Chris Low cited a few reasons during an appearance on The Paul Finebaum Show. Notably, the spring transfer portal window opens next week, and NIL dollars continue to fly.

Low evaluated Iamaleava’s situation at Tennessee, pointing out coach Josh Heupel could understandably prefer to have his quarterback back in 2025. But given the current situation of the portal window, coupled with thoughts about the roster from Iamaleava’s team, and it led to the current situation.

“If you want to look at it from Nico and his representatives’ perspective, they know the portal opens next week,” Low told Finebaum. “People say, why’s it coming out now? It’s not coincidental. The portal opens next week. You squeeze a school if you want to, and you get what you want. And I think there’s also a feeling among his reps, his father, that Tennessee did not put enough people around him as far as receivers, they didn’t protect him well enough. He did get hit a lot last year. Remember, he played the Georgia game after suffering a concussion. So I’m just trying to cover all the bases about this. You sort of step 1,000 feet away and look at this right now.

“But I think no matter if you’re the most Orange-Blooded person or not, at some point, whether it’s at Tennessee or at Ohio State or Miami, when you get to one of these situations – and this won’t be the last – you’re going to have to decide, ‘Alright, we’re going to pony up everything this kid wants. And then, where does it go from there?’ Where does it it ever end? Or, you draw a line and say, ‘Nope. We paid you a lot of money. We’re not paying you anymore. It’s on you. If you want to go, go. If you don’t, alright. We’ll make it work.'”

As a sophomore last season, Nico Iamaleava threw for 2,616 yards and 19 touchdowns in his first year as Tennessee’s starting quarterback. He previously sat behind Joe Milton, and NIL was a central part of the recruiting process. As The Athletic reported at the time, Iamaleava received a lucrative NIL deal when he arrived on Rocky Top.

That agreement was a seminal moment in the NIL era, and something the NCAA was getting ready to investigate before Tennessee fought back. That led to a preliminary injunction and, ultimately, the NCAA allowing NIL discussions to take place during the recruiting process.

As this current situation unfolds, though, Low said the conversations at Tennessee could be wide-ranging. Heupel, of course, likely wants his starting quarterback in place although Jake Merklinger played sparingly last year. But also, from an administration perspective, Low pointed out some possible thinking about Nico Iamaleava’s journey so far.

“You’ve got a guy now who’s been a starter for you for a full year, he’s a three-year starter, you know any coach is going, whatever you need to do to keep him,” Low said. “But you’ve also got to think about, what type of toxicity does that create in your locker room? The kid doesn’t come to practice. Everybody knows that there’s some issue with whatever his NIL deal is. He doesn’t show up. Nobody hears from him. What message does that send to everybody, all to the kids in that locker room? And I think from an upper administration perspective … I think they feel like they’ve done just about everything they can do for this kid and had been very good to him.

“He was one of the first ones – Nico, if you remember Paul, was really the first big contract coming out of high school. The first big NIL contract. And let’s not forget, Tennessee really went to battle for this kid. They sued the NCAA. The NCAA was going to make him ineligible. There was already a Notice of Allegations, I think, that Tennessee had previewed. They went to bat. Now, I’m not saying a lot of that was not self-serving. But that’s the reality of it. And now, here he is, getting ready to go into his third year on campus and they are, as I said, kicking the tires – it’s really semantics. Renegotiate, kicking the tires, talking to other schools. But that’s also the ecosystem we live in now.”