DeShaun Foster explains his thinking in pursuing Nico Iamaleava
UCLA football certainly made a splash bringing in Tennessee transfer Nico Iamaleava. Iamaleava had an NCAA NIL-style holdout which saw him depart from the Volunteers and head back home to Southern California to join the Bruins.
Iamaleava’s move captivated the college football world, which continued on Tuesday when ESPN’s Paolo Uggetti released an article detailing how UCLA brought in the talented quarterback.
“You just have to go with your gut and with the people that you trust,” Foster said in the article. “You can’t just read everything on social media and come to a conclusion from that. You have to do a little bit more homework. So I think we did a good job in vetting and figuring out what we wanted to do, and we were able to execute and now we’re here.”
There was plenty of noise surrounding the transfer, with seemingly every college football fan having an opinion on Iamaleava walking away from his multi-year deal with the Volunteers which could have paid him “in the $10 million range” over the course of four seasons.
Foster acknowledged the awkward situation it created for quarterback Joey Aguilar, which led to Aguilar switching places with Iamaleava by transferring to Tennessee.
“When I was in the NFL, they drafted a running back every year,” Foster was quoted as saying. “Every year I was [at UCLA] as a running back, they recruited more running backs to come here. So, this is a competition sport for coaches, players, everybody.”
It’s been an unusually dramatic spring for UCLA football but with the Iamaleava’s in town, the Bruins have their quarterbacks.
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