I would become Nico's biggest fan if he gets a No Ragrets (or even No Regrets) tattoo before next season.
Bills gf's high heel divots on the field are a safety concern to prevent him from earning even more money
Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points. Last week, college football saw perhaps the most dramatic breakup of the post-NIL era. Spoiler Nico Iamaleava, who you might remember as the first two million dollar man, was originally supposed to be playing in Tennessee’s spring game as the starting QB for the Vols. Instead, his camp sought to rework his contract, pushing for more money, as QB deals in 2024 began to outpace Iamaleava’s original deal. Tenneessee said no, and now Iamaleava is off to the transfer portal. We now have our high-profile and public NIL “holdout.” I’ve been thinking about this story for the last couple of days, reading commentary from other smart analysts and chatting with my own network. I agree that this is a massive story, not just for Tennessee’s on-the-field prospects next season (and that of whoever else gets caught up in the downstream QB-Musical-Chairs that will happen next, like UCLA or UNC)…but for the future of college athlete labor relations and roster management. Here are four takeaways I’m mulling over from the last few days… Throwing huge sums of money at high school QBs is always going to be risky, no matter how good they are Nico Iamaleava was an outstanding high school QB recruit. The 247Sports Composite gave Nico a .9981 recruit rating, which wasn’t just good for five stars and the #2 recruit prospect in his class (just behind some guy named Arch Manning), but 17th all time. Iamaleava was a higher ranked QB prospect than guys like Matthew Stafford, Caleb Williams, Tim Tebow or DJ Lagway. But let’s take another look at the QB Class of 2023: Dante Moore struggled his freshman season at UCLA and transferred to Oregon. Jackson Arnold struggled at Oklahoma and transferred to Auburn. Malachi Nelson couldn’t secure a starting job at USC or Boise State, and is now at UTEP. Chris Vizzina is still the backup, Austin Novosad will battle with Dante Moore for the job at Oregon, Eli Holstein is at Pitt, and, well, we’ll need another newsletter to cover Jaden Rashada. Not a whole lot of established production from this list so far, huh? It’s not just a 2023 QB class thing though. Look at last year. Cade Klubnik has been fine, but most of the rest of the top ten have been guys that haven’t lived up to that potential yet, battled injuries and transfers, or otherwise haven’t worked out. Even the top 30 QB list of all-time has multiple guys that never became productive college players. Recruiting rankings are generally very predictive. If you want to win national titles, you need dozens and dozens of blue-chip dudes on your roster, and a four-star guy is substantially more likely to become an NFL-caliber player than a three-star. But while these rankings are pretty accurate in the aggregate, they can miss on individual players, and perhaps nowhere is that more evident than with QB evaluation. You can only play one QB at a time, and even if that QB has all the physical tools, there’s no guarantee the player will be the right schematic fit, be mature enough, or develop at the timeline analysts projected. In a given year, I reckon at least 40% of the top QB recruits in a given class will fail to develop into P4 starters, if not more. I understand why collectives and schools feel the need to make substantial financial commitments to HS recruits. An elite QB covers up a bunch of other roster problems, and it’s very difficult to win championships without elite QB play. But if you’re going to a market-setting rate, which is exactly what Tennessee did with Nico as a recruit, you better be getting market-setting results..which they clearly didn’t. And honestly, I don’t think it’s a great bet for most elite QB recruits out of high school. The more sensible move would probably be to offer more modest, up-front payments that could balloon into seven-figure salaries once a player had secured a starting role. But this market won’t let that happen, because somebody is willing to pay big money in the hope that the player will eventually be worth it
When your sales pitch is completely and totally about money, you can’t expect the kids to think about anything but money. From a culture standpoint, you need to get a kid legitimately interested in attending your school and being part of your program first and foremost. That creates loyalty from the start. Then you deal with market value payment thereafter. Otherwise, you’re just trying to build a mercenary system. And I’m not sure that works in football.
My guess is that leak isn't about culture. It seems like Tennessee is just poisoning the well to make it harder for this guy to find a new home.
Not sure the rules but can he wait until the end of the academic year and then try and re-enroll in summer school at his next P5 school? When is the next opportunity to sign with a new school ?
Nico is a “star” in the same way Johnny Galecki from The Bing Bang Theory is a star. Yeah he was an overpaid lead in something popular with idiots but that doesn’t mean that he didn’t suck absolute shit at his job. In this analogy, Carson Beck is Jim Parsons.
much like actual trials, it will solve nothing. the solution, and this is to many of our current problems, is to simply put them against the wall.
His first pass of the game against Oregon last year was a dime. After that point, and 10 sacks later it was pretty clear Oregon and Washington were playing different sports. Maybe that changes in year two under Jed Fisch.
Players have been raving about his since about Halloween of last year. But, not a soul on earth in the media has any proof of performance, as practice facility construction right now means they’ve shut down all practice access.
Top 5 Heisman odds, offense should have a much deeper passing game compared to what we had with Gabriel.
He is 6th currently. Preseason Heisman odds basically mean nothing because they just take the best teams from the year before and stick in the new QBs at the top because chances are the guys around them are really good. Sayin is 5th, for example.
Players: Moore is amazing! Coaches: ongoing competition “sources”: flashes of brilliances but inconsistent. Think he might be turnover prone. i’d expect a better version of UCLA Moore (duh) but would be shocked if he truly puts it all together this year.