No Noise for Nico

(Image via Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press)

​By: Lucas Kochevar

Nico Iamaleva has been off the radar ever since he left Knoxville, Tennessee and for good reason. He’s in Los Angeles now with the UCLA Bruins, a city that’s famously not a big college football town. Even USC, the more notable team in California, doesn’t have much of a presence in college football media right now. UCLA is still a big time school with their basketball program and conference prestige now that they’re in the Big 10. 

The Bruins have been like a roller coaster going up and down with their win totals the past couple of seasons. It feels like they’re due for some good and now they have a guy at QB that, at the very least, is known nationally. Nico went through a rocky offseason with all the hubbub with the NIL stuff, but now it has to be in the rearview mirror. 

Nico’s national spotlight was large in 2024 and the excitement for his 2025 campaign was building and then poof it’s gone. Whether he deserved it or not, who knows, but the buzz around Nico while he was at Tennessee was ‘potential best QB in the nation’ buzz. UCLA isn’t Tennessee, but there have been plenty of quarterbacks that have played at smaller football schools with buzz. It’s just interesting how quickly guys will forget about a quarterback transfer.

Nico totaled 2,616 yards with 19 touchdowns and 5 interceptions last season. It’s a modest year in Josh Heupel’s easy bake oven offense, but it was his first year as the full-time starter also. Even looking past the numbers, the eye test will show you one of the most seamless throwing motions in the country. With a flick of the wrist, Nico zips it 60 yards and receivers are walking into the endzone. 

The skill set should translate to the Big 10 against the likes of Northwestern and Maryland. It’ll be up to Nico, head coach Deshaun Foster and OC Tino Sunseri to bring that out for the Bruins. The tough part is that they’ll also see the likes of Penn State, Ohio State and USC. Still, the flashes could be there and UCLA should be better. At the very least, there will be one reason to watch UCLA and Washington in November.