From Tennessee to UCLA, Nico Iamaleava is getting a fresh start close to home - ESPN

LAS VEGAS — Standing inside the Mandalay Bay conference center, all 6 feet and 4 inches of him draped in a powder blue suit, there is nowhere for Nico Iamaleava to hide.

His hair is tightly braided and held by a rubber band, while black-rimmed glasses perch on his nose. Iamaleava's left wrist is adorned by a silver, diamond-studded watch worth thousands; his right is encircled by a pink elastic band honoring his mother, Leinna, a breast cancer survivor.

Throughout the roughly nine hours Iamaleava spends at Big Ten media days in late July, his eyes dart in nearly every direction. Everywhere the 20-year-old quarterback turns, it feels like there is someone there to ask a different version of the same question.

What happened at Tennessee , and how did you end up at UCLA?

Iamaleava barely reacts. His soft-spoken demeanor does not give away much. He speaks of the appeal of UCLA, the chance to be home and close to family and, without much detail, of the way he feels his dramatic exit from Tennessee was misconstrued.

«I think just the outside world in general thinks that it was something that it wasn't,» Iamaleava told ESPN in an interview that day. «A lot of people got it messed up with that.»

In April, ESPN reported Iamaleava's camp pushed for a $4 million NIL contract for 2025 — an amount nearly double his original agreement. Tennessee and its collective did not budge, and after Iamaleava missed a spring practice, head coach Josh Heupel announced the program was moving on from him. Iamaleava entered the transfer portal and soon after landed at UCLA.

«I think for me, going back home was always in the back of my head,» Iamaleava said. «When the false narratives [about money] started coming out, whatever school it was… that