Iamaleava Fallout? Arkansas AD Hunter Yurachek Is Ready To Help Recoup Wasted NIL Money

What happens when you have a college athlete not play a down of football, but then decides to leave school after one semester with a bag full of NIL payments? This is occurring across college sports right now, with the latest example being the Nico Iamaleava saga that also involved his younger brother, Madden, and UCLA quarterback Joey Aguilar. 

Let me preface this by saying that this is only the latest example of what's been going on behind the scenes involving collectives in collegiate sports. But, what we have seen over the last few years is starting to shake like a volcano that is preparing to erupt. 

Right now, we are seeing athletes enroll at a school during a winter portal period, only to then find another school that will take them during the ten-day spring period. So, you might be wondering how this affects the school, besides losing a player. 

Joey Aguilar Signing With Tennessee, Basically Completing Nico Iamaleava Trade With UCLA

Well, when you have an athlete sign an NIL deal with a school, collect numerous paychecks during a four-month span, then decide to leave for another team, the collective is losing out on a lot of money. 

It's no coincidence that Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek released a statement on Tuesday afternoon supporting the Razorbacks collective in their fight to hold athletes accountable to these NIL contracts. 

Is Hunter Yurachek Discussing Madden Iamaleava? Timing Fits

The timing of this statement comes just hours after Madden Iamaleava, the younger brother of Nico Iamaleava, entered the transfer portal with the intention of following his family back to UCLA. 

"I have spoken with the leadership team at Arkansas Edge and expressed my support in their pursuit to enforce their rights under any agreement violated by our student-athletes moving forward," Yurachek noted. "We appreciate Edge's investment in our student-athletes and acknowledge the enforcement of these agreements is vital in our new world of college athletics. 

"We look forward to continued dialogue with all parties resolving these matters."

While contracts that are agreed upon between a collective and an athlete do include buyout languages, a majority of these deals have not been enforced when a player decides to leave for another school. So what happens is that if a player agrees to a six-figure deal, or higher, with the school and then leaves just five months later, after that player has already collected numerous NIL checks. 

It Works Both Ways, But Collectives Are Losing Money To Quick Exits

So, the collective just paid an athlete to go through a semester of workouts, sometimes even shorter, and are then out of a massive chunk of money because they don't want to get muddy with a lawsuit to recoup that financial loss. 

But, it's very tricky for these collectives to enforce any type of ‘buyout clauses’ in these contracts, because it gets around to the ‘pay-for-play’ aspect. NIL deals can also be broken by the collective itself. So, there has to be some type of middle ground where an athlete cannot just leave in a short period of time without any type of penalty. 

KNOXVILLE, TENNESSEE - NOVEMBER 04: Nico Iamaleava #8 of the Tennessee Volunteers and his father Nicholaus Iamaleava after the game against the Connecticut Huskies at Neyland Stadium on November 04, 2023 in Knoxville, Tennessee. Tennessee won the game 59-3. (Photo by Donald Page/Getty Images)

As we've seen with coaching contracts, either the school has to pay a buyout to fire the coach, or the coach that's leaving has to pay the school a negotiated amount of money. The same should apply to athletes who decide it's in their best interest to move on from a school, but after they have already received a number of payments from that collective, who signed them to the first deal. 

In the case of Arkansas AD Hunter Yurachek, he wouldn't have released that statement on Tuesday if he didn't think there was money to recoup from what sounds like the Iamaleava family. 

Now, we'll see if other athletic directors are ready to say the same when it comes to helping their school's collective. This could get very interesting if a buyout was part of the contract.