Rece Davis calls out people not treating Nico Iamaleava as an adult: 'This is not a child actor at 12'

Rece Davis has watched the narrative unfolding around Nico Iamaleava over the past week and change. From his departure in Tennessee to his arrival at UCLA, a large contingent have come to the quarterback’s defense, unwilling to call out a 20-year old for his role in some NIL drama.

While Davis doesn’t necessarily blame Iamaleava for wanting to try and get every cent he can at the college football level, he’s not of the belief that we should be handling him with kid gloves. The ESPN analyst called out people who haven’t been treating the freshly-minted Bruins quarterback like an adult throughout this entire process.

“He’s an adult. I don’t say [he’s] fully mature. I’m more mature at my age and I was at 19. But if you’re old enough to be paid what he’s being paid? If you’re old enough to go to war and vote and get paid $2.4 million? I don’t begrudge him one penny of it. If he could get $4 million, good for him. I just push back at this idea on the idea these guys aren’t [adults],” Davis stated, via the College GameDay Podcast. 

“Yes, they are. They’re not fully mature. They have growing and learning to do. This is not a child actor at 12 that somebody’s having to handle everything. This is different.”

It’s tough to argue with Davis’ sentiment, as his point makes a ton of sense. He certainly wasn’t a fan of the way Iamaleava and his team handled his exit from Tennessee. The ESPN analyst thinks there was a better way to go about things, but it’s a moot point now.

“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 added. “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 that they came off as extraordinarily ungrateful in all of this, which is also a damage to your reputation.

“… 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.”

Moving forward, Nico Iamaleava will be hoping to put his time in Tennessee behind him, and elevate into the quarterback many believed he could be at UCLA. The deck may be stacked against him in many ways, but this is what he asked for. He won’t gain any sympathy from Rece Davis.