On Saturday, Tennessee’s 2025 football team will take the field at Neyland Stadium for the annual Orange & White Game, offering fans a first glimpse at a squad that will aim to make it back to the College Football Playoff.
It will do so without perhaps its most notable player.
The Vols have moved on from quarterback Nico Iamaleava — according to multiple outlets, including Knox News — with Yahoo Sports adding that the former five-star recruit has submitted paperwork to enter the NCAA transfer portal.
It marks the end of a strange and chaotic saga that began Friday, when Iamaleava didn’t attend Tennessee’s practice amid ongoing discussions with the program over NIL deals and would not respond to coaches and staffers like Josh Heupel trying to get in touch with him.
In the handful of years since college athletes have been able to profit from their name, image and likeness, the standoff between Iamaleava and Tennessee was a groundbreaking moment – what is believed to be the first, or at the very least highest profile, instance of a player holding out.
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Iamaleava arrived in Knoxville with no shortage of hype, as the No. 3 overall player in the 2023 recruiting class, according to 247Sports’ composite rankings. After offering alluring glimpses at his potential as a backup in 2023, he threw for 2,616 yards, 19 touchdowns and five interceptions while completing 63.8% of his passes in his first, and ultimately only, season as the Vols’ starter. He struggled in some of his team’s biggest games, though, throwing for only 167 and 158 yards in losses to Georgia and Arkansas, respectively, and completing just 14 of 31 passes for 104 yards in a blowout loss at Ohio State in the first round of the College Football Playoff.
Saturday’s development was both stunning and inevitable — stunning that an unprecedented event was occurring and inevitable that someone who had exhausted goodwill with the program and its fan base would eventually leave after an awkward, highly public showdown.
Given the fascinating and outright bizarre nature of the saga around Iamaleava and Tennessee, social media had plenty of thoughts on Saturday’s news. Here’s a sampling of how people around the internet reacted to Iamaleava’s exit:
Social media reacts to Tennessee moving on from Nico Iamaleava
Tennessee’s spring game is set to kick off at 2 p.m. ET.
