Paul Finebaum: Moving on from Nico Iamaleava is the right call for Tennessee

ESPN’s Paul Finebaum was baffled by Nico Iamaleava’s holdout at Tennessee and now said it was the right call to move on. Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel reportedly told them team Saturday morning they were moving on from Iamaleava.

The hotly debated quarterback was reportedly seeking an increase in his NIL deal with the school after currently making a reported $2.4 million. Reports indicated he and his reps wanted that to increase to $4 million amid a market reset.

Now that Iamaleava is expected to enter the transfer portal when the spring window opens, Tennessee is in a bind. But Finebaum said the Vols made the right choice in this matter.

“I think the fans that I talked to yesterday afternoon, Shae, agree with this,” Finebaum said on SportsCenter. “It is the right call, and it’s the right call because they’ve already been held hostage to a degree by Nico and his people. They went to bat for him about a year ago. They fought because the NCAA wanted to rule him ineligible because of the recruiting, and they stood by and they kept his eligibility. They gave him a chance, and by the way, he helped to reward them by helping Tennessee get to the playoffs last year. But the bigger story here is beyond Nico. This is an inflection point in the history of college football.” 

Iamaleava might not be the last when it comes to college players holding out for more money. The NIL era is constantly evolving and this is the latest domino to fall.

“This is the first time in this NIL era that we have had a literal holdout,” Finebaum said. “Happens every day in the NFL. It’s never happened in college football, he was expected to make about two and a half million dollars. And while people are seeing their 401s crash right now, he wanted more than that, reportedly as much as $4 million and Tennessee finally said, ‘You know what we’re done.’ 

“What’s interesting is, he’s not that great. I talked to very various sources around the SEC yesterday, and I said, ‘Tell me where he ranks out of the 16 quarterbacks in the SEC,’ they said, somewhere between ‘six and eight.’ Tennessee saw the same thing and that’s why he was no longer on the Tennessee roster this morning.”