Pete Thamel reveals Nico Iamaleava ‘hasn’t had a ton of say’ in his transfer process

The storyline of QB Nico Iamaleava transferring from Tennessee to UCLA now seems to be mostly done. That said, he’ll now have to move on with a reputation that wasn’t once there and wasn’t fully earned by just Nico himself.

ESPN’s Pete Thamel, along with Rece Davis, continued to break down the transfer of Iamaleava on the ‘College GameDay Podcast’ on Monday. Thamel would, in those judgements, make note of the fact that Iamaleava was more so in the back seat for what all happened in leading him to leave Knoxville for Los Angeles in the portal.

That’s unfortunate for Iamaleava considering he’s at the center of it either way. This as a whole has also now affected how he’s viewed compared to how he used to be to begin with back on Rocky Top.

“He generally had a good reputation at Tennessee,” Thamel added. “He wasn’t a malcontent there. He had a strong relationship with Josh Heupel. He was liked in the building. He was thought to be a solid leader. He was not a problem at all at Tennessee. He was well-liked there and he seemed to like it there by, by all accounts.”

‘Team Nico’, though, cost him that, as well as a decent amount of money, along the way with how this played out for them. They may now just be saving face but, in the end, not many may be wanting to hear it.

“This crossroads hit – and, again, everyone’s going to have their side, right. Nico’s camp is not going to come out and say, ‘We asked for more money, it backfired on us, and we took a big paycut’. Like, they’re not going to say that so they’re now – that’s the general, yes,” said Thamel. “The general tenor is they had been looking for more. They continued to be hunting around it. Everybody’s redoing their deals, as you go into rev share, this time of year. They were hunting and poking. They had when the portal opened right after the playoff. And, yes, that is the general tenor of what happened. They’re going to deny that. They’ve now thrown scheme fit and NFL preparedness out there. Yes, you are certainly right to be skeptical of.

“There were just a lot of, there were just a lot of, like, from the fetal position excuses that got machine-gunned out that were greeted around the industry with, with a lot of eye rolls.”

That sounds unfortunate for the on-field player now having to deal with something of this level caused by off-field influences. Iamaleava, though, will now have his chance to hopefully change all of that once he starts to take snaps back on the west coast for next season.