Nico Iamaleava has arrived. If hes the $8 million QB recruit, hes the best gamble

June 30, 2024

FARRAGUT, Tenn. — If Nico Iamaleava is indeed the $8 million quarterback, he’s probably the best choice for the gamble.

The rising high school senior from Long Beach, Calif., is a walking, talking, touchdown-slinging, Instagram-storying brand. He draws the eye immediately, and he’s unforgettable once beheld. From his braids to his glasses to his trademark pajama pants (there’s an eponymous line in the works) Iamaleava is — as the members of his generation call it — a whole mood.

If a collective of college football boosters really did throw in to pay seven figures for his name, image and likeness rights, it makes sense that he’s the one that group would choose. As he stopped every few feet to take a picture with a Tennessee fan or with an opposing player following a seven-on-seven tournament Saturday at Farragut High, it became clear that if anyone can handle the crush that comes with being the first true high-dollar experiment of the NIL era, it’s a guy who smiles constantly, who seems genuinely happy to greet everyone who greets him, who tells his youngest fans to “be great.”

No one will acknowledge whether Iamaleava is the player who is the subject of the marketing deal that The Athletic’s Stewart Mandel detailed last month. That deal will pay its subject as much as $8 million in exchange for the collective marketing revenue made off the player’s NIL rights for the next four years. Iamaleava’s father Nick offered a quick “no comment” when asked about the deal Saturday. But within 10 days of the deal being signed, Iamaleava committed to Tennessee. Knoxville-based marketing agency Spyre Sports is the group dealing with the most current Tennessee players, and appears to be on the cutting edge of NIL deals compared to most of its competitors.

So when Iamaleava got to Knoxville last week for a visit and almost immediately announced that he and fellow Tennessee class of 2023 commit Jack “White Lightning” Luttrell from Moultrie, Ga., would be meeting and greeting fans for 30 minutes at a downtown ice cream shop the day before Tennessee football’s most star-studded visit day of the recruiting cycle, it certainly looked as if the star of the Volunteers’ class was clocking in for work.

Come join @JackLuttrell and I at 4pm, taking pictures Vol Fans and having ice cream at @ Cruze Farm Ice Cream! See y’all today pic.twitter.com/KpHGSn207M

— 🇼🇸Nicholaus Iamaleava Jr.🇦🇸 (@nico_iamaleava8) April 8, 2022

@JackLuttrell @nico_iamaleava8 ok!!!!!!! They came out pic.twitter.com/Q72M7uwfxx

— CoachCordell Landers (@TheRBCoach) April 8, 2022

“The ice cream was great,” Iamaleava said Saturday morning. “That was the cherry on top.”

Iamaleava was recruiting to more than an ice cream shop, though. The hope at Tennessee is that his early commitment allows him to have a Pied Piper effect on other highly-touted prospects. He spent the weekend working on Gilbert, Ariz., receiver Kyler Kasper, who also has interest from Ohio State and Notre Dame, and receiver Carnell Tate, who grew up in Chicago but plays for IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla. Tate has offers from dozens of schools, including Alabama, Georgia and Ohio State.

“It’s been great being a recruiter and letting them know what it’s like in Knoxville,” Iamaleava said.

As Friday night wore on, the Iamaleava content machine kept cranking. Vols Twitter was abuzz when Iamaleava appeared on Instagram Live wearing a Mike Honcho T-shirt.

Nico is wearing a Mike Honcho shirt pic.twitter.com/wtEuyALNQN

— Landon Raby (@lambo_raby10) April 8, 2022

Even those who recognize the deep pull reference from Talladega Nights probably don’t know why it’s so meaningful unless they’re Tennessee fans. Earlier this month, Tennessee outfielder Jordan Beck had a home run disallowed against Vanderbilt because his bat didn’t have a required sticker that indicated it had been inspected. During an in-game interview with ESPN’s Dave Neal and Chris Burke, Vols baseball coach Tony Vitello cracked wise about the incident.

“I don’t even know that Jordan Beck should be at the University of Tennessee,” Vitello deadpanned. “He forged his transcript. He is actually a 35-year-old man named Mike Honcho. He just shows up to practice every day and he is a good kid, so we put him in the lineup.”

Suddenly, Mike Honcho was the most popular character in East Tennessee. Mike Honcho T-shirts have been flying off the shelves, and the profit from those shirts goes to Beck. So not only did Iamaleava help spread the word to potentially make a Tennessee athlete some more dough, he further endeared himself to a fanbase that could only accurately be called rabid if rabies somehow found a way to get even more intense.

The morning after, several dozen Tennessee fans paid to park at and to be admitted to Farragut High’s football stadium in 35-degree weather to watch a guy in Tennessee pajama pants throw footballs. But before he could do that, Iamaleava and his Team Toa seven-on-seven teammates had to get warm — which proved more difficult than back home.

“Is this snow?” one of the Team Toa players asked when the precipitation hit during their pre-game routine.

“This is snow,” Nick Iamaleava said with a laugh.

Everyone calls Nico’s dad “Big Nick.” With the Smoky Mountains in the background, the father of eight and former JUCO lineman fits right into the landscape. He towers over even his 6-foot-6 son, and unlike Nico and 6-3 younger brother Madden (a class of 2025 QB), there is nothing lanky about Big Nick. This helps explain why his children are so polite. When Big Nick tells you to say “yes sir,” you say “yes sir” to him and to anyone else within earshot.

Calling what was falling on the Team Toa players’ heads “snow” probably wasn’t entirely accurate, though. A television meteorologist might term it a “wintry mix,” which is far too cheerful a phrase for a combination of snow, rain and sleet that feels like God has decided to dump a jumbo Icee on the heads of everyone standing outside. That probably cut down on the crowd that came to see Nico, but it didn’t stop the diehards. By the time the sun peeked out from behind the rolling clouds near the end of the three games Team Toa played, the stands were checkered with Tennessee orange.

By that point, Nico was warm. It’s difficult to tell much about his pocket awareness or his ability to read defenses from a seven-on-seven tournament, but it’s easy to hear the ball sizzle when it leaves his hand. He can power throws to the far sideline, and he can drop a deep ball into a receiver’s hands. On one play, Nico threw a perfect teardrop 40 yards over a cornerback to the outstretched arms of Mission Viejo, Calif., receiver Mikey Matthews.

“Hey sportswriters,” Team Toa coach Cordell Landers yelled, “write about Mikey Matthews.” Landers, a former JUCO coach and one-time Florida recruiting staffer, has been friends with Big Nick for years. Given his experience, he understands how valuable being in Nico’s orbit can be for a player. Matthews, who has a 3.8 GPA and also plays rugby, is a three-star recruit who in the past six weeks has picked up scholarship offers from Boise State, Utah, Colorado and Tennessee. More could be on the way.

Big Nick has coached most of this group since elementary school. The core group is from Long Beach, where Big Nick grew up and then stayed to raise his family. Nico played for Long Beach Poly High as a freshman before transferring to Warren High in nearby Downey, Calif. In March, Nico transferred back to Poly, where he is expected to lead the Jackrabbits to a national ranking.

Speculation that he is the seven-figure five-star will make Nico the best known player on his team, but he has a long way to go to become the most famous person who ever roamed the halls of his high school. Baseball players Tony Gwynn, Chase Utley and Milton Bradley graduated from Poly. So did tennis star Billie Jean King. At one point, Snoop Dogg, Nate Dogg, Warren G and Cameron Diaz were students at the same time. The list of football alumni is equally impressive: DeSean Jackson, Willie McGinest, Carl Weathers, and plenty more.

Though Nico doesn’t yet match Apollo Freaking Creed in terms of fame, he tends to generate buzz wherever he goes. Older sister Nicaylah explained that crowds tend to gather when he’s around. At a football game or volleyball match — much of the family plays or played volleyball, and Nico is currently one of the top players in his area — it’s usually because he’s the best player. But even outside of sporting events, he’ll get the “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” treatment from people who have no idea he’s an athlete.

Basically, Nico gives off the vibe of someone who probably should be famous for something. That’s probably how he created a signature look and started a trend by accident. In January, Team Toa was playing in a seven-on-seven tournament in Miami. This particular tournament allowed pass rushing, and the members of the South Florida Express chased Nico around the field. All that running left his sweatpants caked with mud. The next day, the team was running late leaving its hotel. Big Nick was yelling for everyone to hurry, and as we’ve established, when Big Nick says something, everyone complies. When Nico realized his pants were too muddy to wear again, he threw on the closest clean bottoms he could find and ran out the door. After he torched opponents that day wearing pajama bottoms, Nico started wearing them for every seven-on-seven event. His teammates followed suit. So did opponents.

On Saturday, Luttrell joined Team Toa for its games. He wore striped pajama pants. Madden wore blue ones emblazoned with yellow ducks. Madden and Nico’s grandfather wore Pabst Blue Ribbon pajama pants. Nico-branded pajama pants are in the works.

And if he is indeed the player who made that deal, that is a potentially potent revenue stream for the collective if it hopes to make back the money it has promised. If Nico eventually does become Tennessee’s starting quarterback and he leads the Volunteers back to real relevance in the SEC, half the kids in the state will beg their parents for Nico pajama bottoms. The parents probably would buy a few for themselves.

It took nearly a half hour to get Nico from the field to a waiting vehicle to get to his next stop Saturday. Everyone wanted a word or a photo or a video that could be remixed as an Instagram reel or Tik Tok post. One guy wanted to rap.

What’s life like for Nico Iamaleava in Knoxville?

Here is the man rapping about the Vols QB commit and his brother, Madden. pic.twitter.com/AiMETGVAaz

— Mike Wilson (@ByMikeWilson) April 9, 2022

David Dodson had to prod his boys — students at Farragut High — to get over their nerves and ask for a photo with a fellow high school student. As Nico and the boys smiled, the elder Dodson snapped a photo with his phone. Dodson, a defensive lineman who played at Tennessee during the transition from Johnny Majors to Phillip Fulmer, figured he’d see what all the fuss was about. He came away impressed with Nico but still unsure how all the surrounding issues will ultimately affect the game.

Of course, neither Nico nor anyone else currently being recruited had anything to do with creating this new funhouse mirror version of football recruiting. Compensation of college athletes went from heavily — and possibly illegally — regulated to virtually unregulated almost overnight. Various state legislatures passed laws that took effect in 2021 allowing players to make money off their names, effectively banning NCAA regulations that denied players that basic economic right. Last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court handed the NCAA a 9-0 defeat in an antitrust case regarding how much educationally related money schools could give to athletes. Though that case didn’t directly reference paying athletes for their skill on the field, the justices made clear that any NCAA rule capping compensation was open to antitrust scrutiny in the federal court system. This has scared the schools from making any new rules and slowed even more the NCAA’s enforcement of the existing ones*.

* Tennessee is still awaiting a Notice of Allegations from the NCAA in an infractions case involving former football coach Jeremy Pruitt. By the time the typically slow-turning wheels of NCAA justice spin around on that case, the entire landscape will look completely different than it did in 2020 when the accusations against Pruitt were made.

Collectives are going to make deals with recruits. Some players may choose the highest bidder. Some may choose a combination of revenue now plus a program’s ability to prepare them for an NFL future. In this lightly regulated state, the players are worth what most of the rest of us are professionally — whatever someone wants to pay them.

If Nico is the player with the deal, then the only way he can make the collective’s investment pay off is by getting on the field at Tennessee and being good. Not that he needed a reminder of how little of a sure thing that is, but he got a powerful one a few minutes after leaving Farragut High. The Team Toa caravan traveled east down Interstate 40 into Knoxville. It arrived at Tennessee’s football complex, where the Volunteers were holding their most important scrimmage of the spring. Construction on Neyland Stadium eliminated the possibility of staging a proper spring game, so Vols coaches decided to combine the scrimmage with a big recruiting weekend and a celebration of former Vols — Vols For Life, in the local lexicon — and the families of current players.

As great as some of the throws Nico made Saturday morning were, none were as beautiful as the ones sailing out of the right hand of Joe Milton. “He will look like the best quarterback you have ever seen in your life,” said a coach who recruited but didn’t sign Milton, a 6-foot-5, 245-pounder from Orlando, Fla., who played for Michigan before transferring to Tennessee last summer. Standing behind Milton as he runs an offense, the hyperbole of that assessment melts away. Watching Milton throw a football up close is breathtaking. In terms of pure arm talent, there may only be a handful of NFL quarterbacks who can match Milton.

Yet Milton doesn’t start for Tennessee. He did at the beginning of the 2021 season, but by Tennessee’s second game it became apparent that Virginia Tech transfer Hendon Hooker was better at running new coach Josh Heupel’s offense in games against live defenses. Hooker had chosen to transfer before Pruitt was fired. He didn’t win the job in the spring, and he was cast firmly as the backup in preseason camp. Now Hooker is a folk hero after helping Tennessee win seven games in a season that began with Year Zero expectations.

No matter how many deals Nico Iamaleava has or hasn’t made, the hardest part is yet to come. He’s got to prove he’s worth the hype. On the field. Against another team’s defense. If he’s the player with that megadeal, he seems ideally suited to handle the attendant duties. But the question that matters can’t be answered for at least another year.

Will he be the quarterback we know because of his off-field business acumen? Or will he ignite true Nico-mania and lead Tennessee football somewhere it hasn’t been in more than a decade?

The second one will move a lot more units of pajama pants.

ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57kmtram5kZXxzfJFrZmlsX2Z%2BcLrInKZmoZGirq2xwK%2BYZqyVo7umv9KenGammaF8