LOS ANGELES -- When UCLA football takes the field against Utah on Saturday night, it's more than a season opener for quarterback Nico Iamaleava.
A Long Beach native and Warren High School alum, Iamaleava is returning to Southern California after transferring from Tennessee for his redshirt sophomore season over the offseason. Now that he is back home, the trek for his 20 to 30 family members, whom he estimated would be attending on Saturday, is much closer now than it was in Knoxville, Tennessee.
“Just me being back home and having my whole family at the games is going to be fun for me,” he said after practice on Wednesday. “Seeing all their faces in the crowd is definitely fun.”
“I’m excited, man,” he added. “I’m tired of playing against our own guys, so I can’t wait to get out there and play another team.”
Of course, attendance is mandatory for one of his siblings — his younger brother Madden, a freshman who is also a quarterback for the Bruins. The two are spending a lot of time together, as members of the same position group and roommates as well.
“He’s just being a sponge,” Nico Iamaleava said of his brother. “He’s running scout team and in our meetings, he’s just being a sponge, trying to learn everything he can, and it’s been fun having him in the room … We talk a lot of football, a lot of film studies. So it’s been great having him under my wing and him being here with me.”
The two have been closely linked throughout their sometimes-controversial careers, with Madden transferring to UCLA shortly after Nico did the same. As a result, much of the college football world thinks of Madden more as Nico’s brother than as an individual.
“He’s kind of dealt with it since high school, his whole life,” Nico said. “I think he does a good job dealing with it. But he’s his own person at the end of the day, and when his time comes, he’s gonna show y’all what he’s about.”
As part of his homecoming, Iamaleava will be playing at one of college football’s most iconic venues, a stadium at which he claimed he has always wanted to play. He would have done so last season had his Tennessee team defeated Ohio State in the first round of the College Football Playoff.
“I almost had a chance last year to come here and play,” he recalled. “Came up short, but I’ve always been excited to play in the stadium. It’s a surreal moment for me, and I can’t wait to just get in there.”
Saturday’s game will be Iamaleava’s first time at the Rose Bowl as a player, but not the first time he’s set foot inside the stadium. He said he went to “a couple” of games there as a child. He admitted he didn’t have too many memories from those games, but did attend UCLA’s home game against Oregon last season, which took place during Tennessee’s bye week. The Bruins lost that contest 34-13.
“That wasn’t, you know, a good memory for me,” he lamented. “But [we’re] ready to go this year.”
The season begins against a Utah team known for its defense, but Iamaleava is embracing the challenge, and he emphasized his excitement to play an actual football game.
“They’ve had that great defense for I don’t know how long, you know, these past couple years,” he said. “I’ve always heard about Utah being a great defense, so I can’t wait for the challenge, and I’m ready to go.”