Pete Thamel reveals stance on Nico Iamaleava from teams in the NIL market: ‘My God, no’

The fallout from the recent drama between Nico Iamaleava and Tennessee will have significant impact on the quarterback’s NIL market value. According to ESPN insider Pete Thamel, Iamaleava will now lose money compared to what he would have made if he had stuck with his original contract with the Vols.

The saga between Iamaleava begun when On3’s Pete Nakos reported Iamaleava and his camp sought an increase in his NIL compensation. The QB reportedly was seeking a deal of $4 million or more and sat out of practice and team meetings amid negotiations with the team.

The end result was that coach Josh Heupel chose to dismiss him from the team on the same day Tennessee played its spring game. Now as Iamaleava scrambles to find a new destination, Thamel explained the problems he is running into with potential suitors.

“He will not get the $4 million-ish dollars from Tennessee, which would be top of the market in this college football 2025 season,” Thamel said on the Pat McAfee Show. “What’s expected is he’s going to get less than what he was making, which is somewhere in the low-to-mid $2 million range as part of his initial then-historic deal that got him to Tennessee. What’s happening right now is that his market is dropping. It’s bottoming out. I am not going to be hyperbolic and say he has nowhere to go or he’s not going to end up anywhere, because he is a very good player and he is better than, I would think, a majority of college quarterbacks. So there will be someone who takes Nico.

“There are very distinct headwinds working against him right now. One is, he skipped practice, ditched his team and he has reputational damage right now. That is real. What has struck me from calling all these schools that maybe have some quarterback uncertainty and could’ve potentially taken Nico. I’m like, ‘What do you think?’ They’re not just like, ‘Man, no thanks.’ They’re like, ‘My God, no. We don’t want that in our building. That’s against our culture.’ I was surprised at the tenor of the notes that have popped up around the marketplace. So where he ends up going is going to depend on a market reset and I think those who have modest interest are being patient.”

Last season, Iamaleava threw for 2,616 yards, 19 touchdowns, five interceptions, a 63.8% completion percentage. He also had 358 rushing yards and three rushing touchdowns. Tennessee made the College Football Playoff but lost in the first round against Ohio State.

Currently, Nico Iamaleava has an NIL valuation of $2.1 million according to On3. However, that is down from $3.1 million in just one day.

His production from last season puts him among the top quarterbacks in college football, and as Thamel said, it’s seems inevitable that somebody will take a chance on his talent. However, he expects them to wait it out to see where his final number comes in at, as Nico Iamaleava will still command a large amount of NIL money. There’s also the question of how well he integrates into the offense of whatever team he chooses with little time to learn the playbook.

“They’re going to wait for the reality of his market to check in,” Thamel said. “Because, simply put, it’s very difficult to walk into a building in mid-April, win over the team, learn the offense, win the job in three weeks of camp and go thrive as a starting quarterback. You think about Riley Leonard last year, he didn’t even really play good football until October. Some of it was he just hadn’t played in the offense much. He wasn’t used to his teammates. He wasn’t used to his receivers. There’s a very real part of that in quarterback play that’s going to come into play here.

“If you’re taking Nico at this point, it’s a high-leverage risk. You are bringing all the eyeballs of the college football world and really the sports world to your program. You’re going to have to pay a decent amount of money and if it backfires on you, that is going to be a difficult thing for a coach to overcome. So the headwinds are real. The market is not nearly what was perceived to be by his people intially and how it unfolds, we’ll see.”

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