Rece Davis feels Nico Iamaleava came off 'extraordinarily ungrateful' in split with Tennessee

Nico Iamaleava officially committed to UCLA on Sunday after less than a week in the transfer portal following last weekend’s fallout with Tennessee. The situation as a whole, though, which will continue to follow him moving forward. Especially given how it ended.

ESPN College GameDay host Rece Davis was the latest to assess the transfer, and how it was handled by Iamaleava during the recent episode of the College GameDay Podcast. Davis began by accepting that this is all part of this new era in college sports with, hopefully, some of these extreme cases being able to be dealt with soon by court ruling.

“There are a lot of different ways to look at this and the first way that I look at it is this,” Davis said. “If you’ve listened to this podcast or heard me on GameDay for years, you know that I’m all for players getting paid. I also believe that the players have not gotten their due for years. We’re going to see some of this resolved, if and when and, assumingly, it’ll be when, the, the House settlement gets approved.”

That said, Davis also doesn’t agree with how Iamaleava, along with the others involved, handled the breakup with Tennessee.

“There’s a way to conduct business and there’s a way not to conduct business. And, in my judgement, Nico Iamaleava and his representatives, which include his father and other agents, handled this as ham-handedly and as poorly as you can possibly imagine,” Davis said. “They didn’t have the leverage that they thought they had. They didn’t have a landing spot, which you need to have a landing spot before you go in and start demanding extra money. And, the other thing is is that they came off as extraordinarily ungrateful in all of this, which is also a damage to your reputation.

“Nico Iamaleava, for those of you who might not know, was first approached when he was still in high school and Tennessee came with an NIL deal — you know, all within the rules — and then, subsequently, in court, the Tennessee state attorney, I believe, or attorney general, I think I have that right, fought on his behalf to make sure the NCAA couldn’t say that he was ineligible to play for Tennessee. And he collected some money up front, he collected some money in the year that he did not play, and then he had, he had moments last season but he didn’t have a great season by any stretch of the imagination, although he was certainly good and he had some big moments,” Davis continued. “He was a guy who was wildly talented, still growing and you felt as if, unlimited potential if he stayed on course. Yet, it has become apparent that there were other factors at play and Nico either was not interested or did not quite have the, uh, internal strength to stand up to his circle and say this is not the way we’re going to do business. And, as a result, he skipped out on a practice and that was the end of the road for him with the Volunteers.”

Because of that, while Tennessee is still reconsidering their options at quarterback, Iamaleava is the one seemingly on the losing side of all this. Especially given the reality he’s expected to get less money and with potentially worse circumstances than he would have had he stayed in Knoxville.

“What’s next for Nico? Well, I think it’s a very limited market. Not a lot of people have the money, room, or inclination to risk their own quarterback room on him. And, you know, there are a lot of unanswered questions,” Davis said. “He’ll play. He’s talented enough to play great and I’m sure that he can come back from this. There’s no doubt about it. But it is certainly a significant bump on the road.”