Don’t make a power play if you don’t have the power.

That’s the lesson former Tennessee quarterback (and current man without a college football country) Nico Iamaleava has learned in recent days. He had a $2.4 million NIL bird in the hand in Knoxville. His effort to beat the bushes for $4 million caused the bird in his hand to fly away.

With North Carolina reportedly out and only Tulane and UCLA currently linked to Iamaleava, Pete Nakos of On3.com now reports that multiple schools are waiting to see whether his price falls into the range of $1 million.

It’s a new wrinkle in the NCAA’s NIL dynamic. Now that a player can play the leverage game, there’s a chance he’ll overplay his hand. Iamaleava apparently has.

The $4 million he wants seems to be nowhere to be found. The $2.4 million he had may be gone for good. And the entire exercise will raise the stakes on his ability to perform well enough to position himself for an NFL career that, given the ongoing surge in quarterback salaries, could pay him a lot more than $4 million.

For now, it looks like he got bad advice, or that he ignored good advice he received. Regardless, Iamaleava has left money on the table that he quite possibly will never see. And he’ll eventually be landing in a place where he’ll need to establish himself all over again in the hopes of laying the foundation to play quarterback at the next level.