This past offseason, Nico Iamaleava abruptly left Tennessee after reports surfaced of complications regarding his NIL (name, image, and likeness) negotiations and landed at UCLA.
Just a few games into the 2025–26 season, however, Iamaleava has found himself in a losing situation.
He’s gone from an $8 million multi-year contract playing on a College Football Playoff team in front of sold-out crowds at Neyland Stadium to a $1.5 million contract playing on an 0-3 program in a mostly-empty Rose Bowl. After losing to the University of New Mexico (a non-power-conference program who UCLA paid $1.2 million to play) Friday night, the Bruins fired head coach DeShaun Foster.
Iamaleava’s situation is widely considered a cautionary tale of when a player can be steered in the wrong direction by their representation—in this case, Iamaleava’s father, Nic, a family friend and coach named Cordell Landers, and at least one lawyer.
Back in April, a member of Iamaleava’s camp pushed back against the idea that his representation had led him astray. “His representation hasn’t steered him wrong,” the family friend said. “At the end of the day, what did we do wrong to steer him and put him in a bad situation? We didn’t.”
When reached by Front Office Sports on Monday morning, Landers declined to comment on Iamaleava’s current situation—and whether he might be interested in transferring.
Iamaleava’s saga began on April 10, when a report surfaced ahead of the Vols spring game saying the quarterback was in the middle of renegotiating his NIL contract with the Vols’ collective. Iamaleava’s father, Nic, denied the report on social media.
Iamaleava didn’t appear at practice the following day on April 11, leading to speculation about whether he was attempting to hold out as part of his contract negotiations.
A member of Iamaleava’s representation told FOS he wasn’t asking for more money, and had already decided to transfer by the time that practice came around—which was why he didn’t show. Another source familiar with Iamaleava’s NIL contract, however, said he had asked for a raise during the winter, and that his representatives had been increasingly unresponsive, leading to confusion and uncertainty about his status even before the report surfaced.
The Vols decided to part ways with him the next morning.
Iamaleava immediately entered the transfer portal, and landed at UCLA. He was rumored to earn somewhere in the $1.5 million total range in his NIL contract with the Bruins collective—taking a significant pay cut from Tennessee.
Iamaleava’s choice to transfer had ripple effects. UCLA quarterback Joey Aguilar had just committed to UCLA after transferring from Appalachian State. He decided to transfer again and swiftly secured a spot at Tennessee, along with a seven-figure NIL contract, FOS reported at the time. Though the two schools didn’t execute an official “trade” as they would in the pros, sources confirmed to FOS, the swap was widely considered the first quarterback “trade” in college football history.
Several months later, Iamaleava denied he left because of money, and called stories claiming that was the case “false reports.”
”I did what was best for me—that was getting back home to my family, and closer to my family while still competing at the highest level,” he said at Big Ten media days in Las Vegas. Iamaleava is a Los Angeles native—his younger brother Madden, also a quarterback, abruptly left Arkansas to join him in Westwood shortly after he made the announcement.
The Bruins opened their season with a 43-10 loss to the No. 16 Utah Utes. Then, they fell 30-23 to UNLV. This past Friday night, they lost 35-10 against the New Mexico Lobos despite being favored and expecting an easy win—evidenced by their $1.2 million contract to pay the Lobos for playing them. The Rose Bowl in Pasadena was less than half full, with just 30,000 fans showing up.
On Sunday morning, the Bruins announced they had fired DeShaun Foster. He’ll be replaced by former special assistant to the head coach, Tim Skipper, who will serve as interim coach for the rest of the year.
The firing doesn’t just shake up the team’s leadership—it opens up the possibility of a roster overhaul as well. Once a coaching change occurs, players have 30 days to enter the transfer portal. Meanwhile, incoming recruits have already begun to decommit.
Meanwhile, Aguilar appears to be thriving at Iamaleava’s old position under center in Knoxville. Aguilar won the starting quarterback spot in August, and has since led the No. 15 Vols to two wins to open the season. On Saturday, he put up a formidable fight in an overtime loss against No. 5 Georgia—in front of a sold-out crowd of more than 100,000 fans at Neyland Stadium, becoming the first SEC quarterback in 20 years to go 14-for-14 in the first quarter.
Of Aguilar, head coach Josh Heupel said postgame: “There’s a lot to love.”
