In the 2025 season, Syracuse football will open up against another Orange-clad school.
The 'Cuse, led by head coach and ace recruiter Fran Brown, will kick off 2025 versus Southeastern Conference member Tennessee on Saturday, Aug. 30, in Atlanta. The Volunteers, in 2024, went 10-3 overall in the rugged SEC, reached the 12-team College Football Playoff and finished No. 9 in the final Associated Press top-25 poll.
Ahead of the 2025 stanza, some national media outlets pegged Tennessee as a preseason top-10 to top-20 squad. And now, the Vols are searching for a starting quarterback (or at least an additional signal-caller).
According to numerous media reports, Tennessee coaches were moving on from quarterback Nico Iamaleava, who planned to enter the transfer portal. The spring transfer portal window will officially run from April 16 to April 25.
Iamaleava, as a redshirt freshman in 2024, completed 63.8 percent of his passes for 2,616 yards with 19 touchdowns and just five interceptions, per ESPN statistics. On Sunday when I wrote this article, in its national transfer rankings, 247Sports placed him as five stars, No. 1 overall and No. 1 at quarterback.
Syracuse football's first 2025 opponent needs a new starting quarterback.
Many reports stated that the whole situation surrounding Tennessee and Iamaleava centered on his name, image and likeness funds with the Vols. I've seen all kinds of massive numbers being purported out there in articles, and it sounds like he was already receiving a sizable sum but was looking for even more from the Vols.
I wrote, on Sunday morning, about how NIL in college basketball is getting out of hand. That applies to college football, too. That being said, if Iamaleava can get paid even more someplace else than he was receiving from Tennessee, more power to him.
Per this story from On3, Volunteers head coach Josh Heupel discussed Iamaleava this weekend following the program's annual spring game. Heupel said in part, "Obviously we’re moving forward as a program without him (Iamaleava). I said it to the guys today, there’s no one that’s bigger than the Power T and that includes me. And they hear me say that a lot inside of that team room. ... And as a program since we’ve been here, we’ve won with a lot of different QB’s. Done it historically in my career with a lot of different QBs. Some of those guys have been older, some of them have been younger, but we’ll have a quarterback that’s ready to go win and help us compete for a championship."
The 'Cuse, by the way, also held its annual spring game this weekend, with it taking place on Saturday at the JMA Wireless Dome. Here are some of my thoughts on the game and the Orange program as spring practices will soon wrap up.
Brown, by the way, recently named Rickie Collins as the Syracuse football starting quarterback in 2025. The 6-foot-2, 205-pound Collins, who will be a redshirt sophomore, is a three-star transfer from another SEC school, LSU.