Last August, CBS Sports' Tom Fornelli power-ranked the top 10 quarterbacks in college football and he ranked Tennessee Vols quarterback Nico Iamaleava at No. 6. 

On Wednesday, with spring practices getting underway around the country, Fornelli unveiled his new college football quarterback power rankings. 

Iamaleava led the Vols to a 10-3 record last season (with wins against Alabama and Florida) which included Tennessee's first ever trip to the College Football Playoff. 

Not bad for a redshirt freshman who was a first-year starter. 

Logic would suggest that Iamaleava climbed a few spots in Fornelli's rankings after that performance in 2024, right? 

Stunningly, that isn't the case. 

Iamaleava, in fact, wasn't even included in Fornelli's new top 10. And he wasn't listed as an "honorable mention", either (yet somehow Vanderbilt's Diego Pavia, who lost at home to Iamaleava and the Vols last season, was listed as an "honorable mention"). 

You can see Fornelli's full rankings here. 

I have no idea how a quarterback who led his team to the College Football Playoff as a first-time starter is somehow getting less recognition the following offseason. 

Is it because Iamaleava didn't put up crazy stats? If so, that's a mind-boggling bad process. The only stat that matters is wins. And Nico delivered more wins than almost any quarterback on Fornelli's list (the only other quarterbacks in Fornelli's top 10 that led their programs to the playoff were former Georgia quarterback Carson Beck, who is now at Miami, Clemson's Cade Klubnik, and Penn State's Drew Allar). 

I don't understand overlooking Iamaleava. The SEC was a grind last season and he was one of just three quarterbacks (along with Beck and Quinn Ewers at Texas) that was able to guide his team to the postseason (Beck and Ewers, by the way, had far more experience than Iamaleava, too).

The expectation at Tennessee, of course, is that Iamaleava will take a big step forward in 2025 with a year of experience under his belt. I guess Fornelli is betting that Iamaleava, for some reason, will regress in 2025. 

Texas quarterback Arch Manning, by the way, is at No. 1 on Fornelli's list despite the fact that he only has two career starts. Maybe this isn't a list that's supposed to be taken seriously….

Just for good measure, though, here's what Iamaleava's former teammate at Tennessee, wide receiver Bru McCoy, had to say at the NFL scouting combine last week. 

“Nico’s a dog, man,” said McCoy. “As he developed and he came into himself, especially as he got to Tennessee and got under Coach Heupel and in his system, man, I think he’s got a really bright future ahead of him and is going to do a lot of really good things.”

And here's what wide receiver Dont'e Thornton, another former teammate of Iamaleava's, said at the NFL scouting combine. 

“He was always prepared for big games,” said Thornton of Iamaleava. “No matter what it was, a lot of people tried to tag that he was a freshman, it’s his first starts, his first season starting in the SEC, but I feel like every game he came in with the mindset that he was going to be the greatest he could be. And he showed that in a lot of those big games.”

Maybe we should listen to what the guys who took the field with Iamaleava have to say over the weird narrative the national media is trying to sell this offseason.  

‘If he’s falling to the third round somebody’s gonna look like a fool’ – Vols insider dishes on James Pearce’s character concerns

Where do these rumors come from?