How the Nico Iamaleava-Tennessee split impacts the 2025 SEC title picture

Nico Iamaleava pushed the Doomsday button last week and forced the whole of college football to reckon with something it was dreading — a holdout. 

According to exhaustive reporting in the days since news broke that the Tennessee starting quarterback was entering the transfer portal, it has been revealed that last Friday was more of a tipping point and less of a bomb dropped out of nowhere. CBS Sports’ Josh Pate claimed that Iamaleava was among a number of players who tried to opt out of the College Football Playoff last season in pursuit of more NIL money. ESPN reported that representatives for Iamaleava asked for his NIL deal with Tennessee to be reworked back in January while the winter portal was still open. ESPN also reported that Iamaleava reps contacted “at least 1 other school” before spring ball started. 

Discontent has seemingly been a theme in Knoxville since before Ohio State chipped the sheen off Iamaleava’s $8 million arm. 

So, when he didn’t show up to practice last Friday, the breakup was all but assured. Iamaleava told his offensive coordinator he was hitting the portal Friday night, per reports, and Josh Heupel told reporters Saturday afternoon that, “There’s no one that’s bigger than the Power T.”

We’ve seen professionals sit out offseason training camps and preseason games in pursuit of reworked contracts. We’ve never seen a student-athlete at this level of college football do it. Until now. 

Tennessee’s swift response should have a chilling effect. This will likely get fixed. Enough people are going to be plenty loud about it. Rather than lament what has happened to our beloved game, my mind went a different direction. “What the heck does this do to the SEC futures market?” 

2025 SEC futures to bet on after Nico Iamaleava’s transfer

Bet Tennessee over 8.5 wins (+120 via BetMGM)

Bet Alabama to win the SEC (+650 via bet365)

Here’s the thing: The Iamaleava name far outpaces the Iamaleava production at this point. 

In Tennessee’s 3 losses last season, Iamaleava averaged 4.6 yards per pass attempt with a 54.8% completion rate and 0 passing touchdowns. After profoundly announcing himself to the world during the first 3 weeks of the 2024 season, Iamaleava was handcuffed throughout SEC play. Tennessee was safe and conservative with its redshirt freshman quarterback. 

Maybe that’s Heupel’s fault. Maybe there were reasons the head coach didn’t completely trust Iamaleava enough to put the game on his shoulders. 

Iamaleava will grow and some of those attempts to rifle the football into a window will (hopefully) morph into a layered pass that leads the receiver to where he needs to be. But Tennessee won 10 games last season because of its defense and its ground game. Suggesting anything less is revisionist history. 

I didn’t have Iamaleava as one of my way-too-early Heisman Trophy contenders. I wasn’t projecting that a 2,616-yard, 19-touchdown passer would become a 4,000-yard, 30-touchdown destroyer overnight. He’s not there yet. 

So when Tennessee’s win total tumbled an entire game, down to 8.5, at DraftKings, it felt worthy of a look. 

Heupel has been a head coach at the FBS level for 7 years. He has won 9 games in a season 5 times. He failed to do so in 2020, when there was a pretty significant thing happening outside of football, and he failed to do so in 2021, when he took over the husk of Tennessee football that Jeremy Pruitt left him. 

In each of the last 3 seasons, Heupel has won 9-plus games. He’s done so with 3 different starting quarterbacks and 2 different offensive coordinators. 

Change will once again be the theme of the offense during the offseason. Tennessee has to replace its starting running back, its top 3 receivers, and 4 starters on the offensive line, in addition to QB1. 

Before the Iamaleava transfer, the Vols ranked 87th nationally in returning offensive production, according to Bill Connelly’s calculations. 

They ranked 22nd in returning defensive production. Four of 5 starters in the secondary are back. Both starting linebackers (post-Pili injury) are back. James Pearce Jr. leaves a huge hole that needs filling on the edge, but Tennessee has guys looking for chances. 

Unlike his peers, Heupel has opted to focus on high school recruiting, retention, and development throughout his tenure. Tennessee has signed a top-20 high school class in each of the last 4 seasons. 

It’ll be a young team in 2025, and that might bring an end to the fledgling streak of consecutive 9-win seasons. 

Maybe. Maybe not. Tennessee plays Alabama on the road and it hosts Georgia early. Those are the only 2 teams with shorter than +3000 odds to win the SEC Championship that Tennessee will play all year. No Texas, no LSU, no Ole Miss, no South Carolina, no Texas A&M. 

Six SEC teams finished the 2024 season with a losing record in league play. The Vols face 5 of them. 

It’s also worth stating the obvious here… Tennessee is going to add a quarterback. How often does a starting job for a CFP-contending school with significant financial resources come open this time of year? Tennessee will be an attractive spot for guys involved in quarterback competitions all over the country. And there are some good ones. 

Plus, in the Wild, Wild West, Tennessee won’t be sitting on its hands waiting for someone to dip their toes. Take this from ESPN’s Pete Thamel last week: 

Sources added to ESPN that with Iamaleava’s future uncertain, officials from Tennessee’s collective began to make calls Friday to see what the potential market could look like for his replacement. One quarterback got more money from his school Friday after Tennessee’s collective called third-party officials tied to him, a source told ESPN.

South Alabama quarterback Gio Lopez, a guy pursued by Georgia and LSU in the winter, hit the transfer portal on Monday. He won’t be the only guy. Tennessee will have some options.

I think Iamaleava’s transfer actually introduced some value into Tennessee’s offseason win total. I like 8.5 much more than 9.5 given who is on the schedule and who is still in the UT locker room. 

Elsewhere, Alabama looks like an obvious beneficiary of the Rocky Top shakeup in the SEC futures market. The Crimson Tide played Tennessee to a bitter, 24-17 defeat in Knoxville last season. Dylan Sampson ran for 139 yards and 2 scores, Jalen Milroe threw 2 picks, and Iamaleava threw a go-ahead touchdown with 5:52 in the fourth. Take all 3 of those guys away and move the game to Tuscaloosa and what do you get? 

I’d put the Crimson Tide as an 8.5-point favorite if you made me set a line right now. 

The meat of Alabama’s schedule in 2025 comes from Sept. 27 through Nov. 8, when the Tide face Georgia and South Carolina away from home, host Tennessee and LSU, and try to figure out how to stop the unstoppable Commodores. (Too soon?) 

I am an unabashed advocate for Alabama offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb — I think he was one of the best additions any team made all offseason — and if the Tide get their quarterback spot figured out, they’re a serious threat to do a ton of great things in 2025.

If Tennessee takes even a slight step back and that game leans more toward Alabama, the Tide are more attractive as the preseason pick. The defense has a chance to be elite, the roster is loaded, and one of the coin-toss games on the schedule just changed.

The +650 price on BetMGM and bet365 implies a 13.3% chance Alabama wins the SEC title. The Tide were the No. 2 team in the country when Connelly unveiled his initial SP+ projections back in February. I suspect ESPN’s FPI model will give Alabama a better-than-13.3% chance to win the SEC when those projections are released closer to the season.

I believe it’s highly unlikely Kalen DeBoer bombs as the Alabama coach. It’s possible the 2024 Alabama team will be the worst one DeBoer has. And that group almost made the CFP after getting curb-stomped by Oklahoma. 

Alabama was close. It’ll be better in 2025. And one of its contending peers in the SEC just got a dose of uncertainty injected into the system. 

Florida and Ole Miss have some sleeper value to me as picks to win the SEC, but I don’t think either situation is impacted by this Iamaleava transfer beyond the obvious, “one less contender” property. I’ve been warming up to Alabama as the spring has gone on. DraftKings‘ price is +400 on the Tide to win the title, and that might be too high still.

Derek Peterson

Derek Peterson does a bit of everything, not unlike Taysom Hill. He has covered Oklahoma, Nebraska, the Pac-12, and now delivers CFB-wide content.