Joey Aguilar heard the rumors. He realized it was all but certain that Nico Iamaleava was headed to UCLA after a tumultuous breakup at Tennessee.
His first instinct was to stay and compete.
Sure, Iamaleava was a former five-star recruit who had already earned millions and was anointed as a future star before he ever stepped onto a college field. But Aguilar, who had transferred from Appalachian State to UCLA after the 2024 season, wasn’t fazed.
“I believe I could go up against anybody,” Aguilar said in an interview The Athletic.
Aguilar doesn’t run from competition. He welcomes it. That’s what happens when you have zero offers out of high school and make two stops in junior college before getting an opportunity to take a snap in the Division I ranks.
But this situation was unique, and those closest to Aguilar urged him to reconsider. So he entered the transfer portal and landed at Tennessee, creating a de facto quarterback trade between the Vols and Bruins.
Though Iamaleava’s every move has been tracked since he burst onto the recruiting scene, Aguilar’s winding, resilient path to becoming an SEC quarterback is much less known.
And there’s still a chapter left to be written under the brightest lights in the storied SEC.
Said Mike Darr, Aguilar’s coach at Diablo Valley College in Northern California: “He’s not afraid of anything.”
Diego Pavia made national headlines when he sued the NCAA last year in hopes of getting an extra year of eligibility. Aguilar kept close tabs.
Like Pavia, Aguilar was a former junior college quarterback whose eligibility was supposed to expire after the 2024 season. If Pavia could get one more year, why wouldn’t the same rules apply to Aguilar? He visited the compliance office at Appalachian State almost daily, hoping for good news.
In late December, he got it. Not only did Pavia get an extra year, but the NCAA — while appealing the ruling — created a blanket waiver extending an extra season of eligibility for similarly situated former juco athletes for the 2025-26 season. Aguilar would have one more year of college football.
After a coaching change at App State, where he had two up-and-down seasons, Aguilar decided to enter the transfer portal to use his bonus year elsewhere.
UCLA offensive coordinator Tino Sunseri was one of the first to reach out, and the two quickly meshed. New App State coach Dowell Loggains met with Aguilar to gauge his interest in staying in Boone, but the chance for a fresh start and a return to his home state was too good to pass up, so he committed to the Bruins.
Joey Aguilar threw for 6,760 yards in two years at Appalachian State. (James Guillory / Imagn Images)
Aguilar, who grew up in the East Bay, enjoyed being back in California. And his parents, Jose and Lydia, were thrilled, now able to drive to see him play rather than take a cross-country flight.
In Westwood, Aguilar worked hard to learn the playbook and give himself a chance to finish his career in style. He planned to have 80-plus family members at his first home game with the Bruins.
In April, tension reached an apex across the country between Tennessee and its quarterback.
Iamaleava, the gem of Tennessee’s 2023 recruiting class and the quarterback who helped the Vols to the 2024 College Football Playoff, missed practice amid contract talks as his camp sought a raise from the $2.2 million he was scheduled to make this season. The Vols balked. The next day, head coach Josh Heupel confirmed Tennessee was moving on without Iamaleava.
The quarterback submitted paperwork to enter the transfer portal, and speculation quickly connected the Los Angeles-area product to UCLA.
“We smelled it,” Jose Aguilar said.
Joey’s parents encouraged him to talk to Sunseri and head coach DeShaun Foster to find out what was going on. But Aguilar’s inner circle said getting straight answers proved futile.
“It was a little unsettling because we were finding out information through the media,” said Danny Hernandez, Aguilar’s private quarterbacks coach. “DeShaun Foster wasn’t very forthcoming. … Tino Sunseri was in the dark on a lot of stuff. … It felt like nobody knew what was going on and nobody was talking. It just really seemed like a bad situation.”
Jose and Lydia Aguilar said that the UCLA coaches weren’t upfront with Joey about the school’s courtship of Iamaleava.
“At the same time, they don’t have to be,” Jose said. “It’s their program, they’re going to run it how they want to run it.”
Foster maintains he kept the line of communication open. “We talked to Joey before it went public,” he said, “so he heard it from us before he heard it from the media or anything.”
Joey said “the vibes were off” as the April 25 deadline to enter the spring transfer portal neared.
As Aguilar mulled his college future, those around him began to explore potential options. Hernandez, who works with several college quarterbacks, received inquiries from schools that wanted to know if Aguilar planned to enter the portal. His agents assessed QB depth charts elsewhere.
“We knew what schools needed quarterbacks,” said Emily McKiernan, the director of Athlete Marketing for Football NIL at talent agency Octagon, which represents Auguilar. “We went to work reaching out to them to make sure he would find the right fit.”
Iamaleava officially announced his commitment to the Bruins on April 20. Aguilar said he had a “good conversation” with the coaches but “just felt for me and my career, it was best for me to move on from that situation.” The murky QB picture was too risky for Aguilar, who has only one year left to prove to NFL scouts that he’s worth a shot at the next level.
McKiernan said “a handful of options” were considered once Aguilar entered the portal on April 21. But Tennessee quickly shot to the top of the list.
With Iamaleava gone, the Vols had a clear need, with only two scholarship quarterbacks on the roster — redshirt freshman Jake Merklinger and true freshman George MacIntyre — who have attempted passes in college (nine combined).
Aguilar felt comfortable after speaking with Heupel, offensive coordinator Joey Halzle and director of internal and advance scouting Billy High. “Everybody was super real and super genuine,” Aguilar said. By the end of the day, Aguilar committed and agreed to a contract worth around $1.2 million, according to ESPN.
The Aguilars don’t harbor ill will toward UCLA. Joey said he enjoyed his time working with Sunseri. Jose, who has coached youth and high school football for 30 years, understands the business side of it.
“They’re building, and Nico’s a three-year guy and Joey’s a one-year guy. We get it.”
Lydia said she wants Joey to “have the last year that he deserves.”
Joey said he has no complaints.
“I’m not mad at anybody,” he said. “Everything happens for a reason.”
Aguilar’s college football career nearly ended before it truly began.
Despite four years as a starter in high school, Aguilar had no recruiters sniffing around.
“Honestly, I didn’t have anything,” he said. “No college contact, nothing coming out of high school.”
So he enrolled at City College of San Francisco in 2019 seeking an opportunity.
He redshirted his first year, watching the games from the sidelines while on the travel squad and questioning if he should continue to pursue football. He spent more than $100 of his own money each week on BART — “It was a lot of money that I didn’t have,” Aguilar said — to make the 90-minute (each way) commute to practice. His day started at 6 a.m. and he didn’t return home until around 10 p.m.
“It was wearing on him,” Lydia said. “It was like ‘Do I still want to do this?’”
In high school, Aguilar had taken a firefighting class and became enamored with the profession. He thought a lot about it during his long train rides to and from campus.
“I was like, ‘Man, I might as well just stop playing football and start my fireman career.’ But my friends and family were like ‘No, just stay patient.’”
He pushed forward. After one season, he transferred to Diablo Valley College, only a 20-minute commute each way.
Darr was intrigued by Aguilar’s potential but could sense the quarterback needed support after a difficult year at his first juco stop.
“He was pretty discouraged coming out of there,” said Darr, who has since retired from DVC and is now coaching high school football in Texas.
The postponement of the 2020 season due to the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t help. By the time the 2021 season rolled around, it had been nearly two years since Aguilar had played in a competitive game.
DVC already had an established starter, Dylan Graham, who went on to earn a scholarship at Division II University of Texas-Permian Basin, but Aguilar quickly made an impression on the coaching staff. Graham remained the starter out of camp, but there eventually came a point where they had to get Aguilar on the field. On one of his first plays, Aguilar threw a long touchdown on a post route.
“As soon as I put him in, it was like, ‘Damn, I don’t know what I was waiting for,’” said Drew Anderson, DVC’s offensive coordinator at the time. “And he just kind of took off from there.”
Going into his second year at Diablo Valley, Aguilar was the unquestioned starter, but an injury in his second game sidelined him for a month. He grew concerned because it was his last year of junior college football and his last chance to get recruited by Division I schools.
Those worries turned out to be unwarranted. He returned to the field and schools took notice. Coastal Carolina was his first FBS offer. App State wasn’t far behind.
“I liked his attitude,” said Kevin Barbay, App State’s offensive coordinator at the time. “He’s a competitor. The moment’s not too big for him. He’s very confident in himself and his abilities.”
Aguilar committed after taking an official visit.
“We thought, ‘Finally, everything has paid off,’” Lydia Aguilar said.
Before his first FBS start, Joey Aguilar sat at the 4-yard line at Kenan Stadium.
The biggest opportunity of his career had arrived. The Mountaineers were on the road at North Carolina to face the Tar Heels and future first-round NFL Draft pick Drake Maye. Aguilar started that game because Ryan Burger, tabbed QB1 out of training camp, broke a finger in the season opener a week earlier.
Aguilar liked to sit at the 4 because that was his jersey number. Through his AirPods, he listened to “Long Nights” by TMOFF, reflecting on the journey that brought him to that point.
It took a minute just to get here
Been a long ride, I done put that thing in fifth gear
So selective with my time, only waiting to see the check clear
We done came a long way, can’t wait to see next year
That night, Aguilar showed the steely poise that had won his junior college coaches over, throwing two touchdown passes and leading three scoring drives in the fourth quarter and overtime in a 40-34 loss to the Tar Heels.
With Burger sidelined the rest of the season, Aguilar shined, throwing for 3,757 yards and 33 touchdowns to lead the Mountaineers to the Sun Belt championship game. His second season was more turbulent. His numbers dipped across the board, and the team went 5-6 and missed a bowl game after winning nine games in 2023.
His football career was seemingly over.
Then the Pavia ruling changed everything, setting off the chain reaction that led Aguilar from Boone to Los Angeles, then back east to Knoxville.
During his short stay at UCLA, Aguilar went through spring practice with the Bruins while concurrently working to finish his degree in communication studies from App State, which he earned in early May. Once the dust settled on the Iamaleava saga and Aguilar’s pivot, he moved in mid-May to Knoxville to get to work.
“That connection means everything.”#Vols Miles Kitselman says he and QB Joey Aguilar hit it off right away. pic.twitter.com/4EbGn4ai7m
— Paige Dauer (@PaigeDauerFDP) July 15, 2025
Since enrolling, he has devoured game tape from the Vols’ 2024 season to learn the offense and spent extensive time with Halzle and offensive analysts Landry Jones and Jared Peery to get up to speed.
Heupel didn’t guarantee Aguilar anything when they initially spoke.
“They told me I gotta come in here and compete,” Aguilar said. “They have a good QB room already with George and Jake. I’m not coming in expecting to be the starter right away. Everywhere I’ve been, I had to earn the right to be the guy.
“Nothing in my life has been given to me, which is perfectly fine because it just makes me work harder.”
Heupel and Tennessee players lauded Aguilar at SEC media days for his efforts to learn the scheme and jell with his new teammates — on and off the field — since arriving.
“He’s become an interwoven part of the fabric of who we are,” Heupel said.
Aguilar is seemingly an ideal fit for Tennessee’s veer-and-shoot style offense. The scheme utilizes a fast pace and widely spaces the field, which will allow Aguilar to showcase his arm strength, mobility and ability to decipher coverages.
“The entire playbook is wide open for them to do everything in their repertoire,” Hernandez said.
First, Aguilar must win the job, but that hasn’t stopped him from emerging from the pack before. If he does, some of the most storied college football venues await, such as Alabama’s Bryant-Denny Stadium on Oct. 18 and Florida’s Swamp in Gainesville, Fla., on Nov. 22. The Vols host Georgia and Oklahoma at Neyland Stadium.
Fittingly, his last regular-season game would be against Vanderbilt and Pavia, the quarterback who helped Aguilar gain another chance and has a similar beat-the-odds tale.
Lydia, when first glancing at Tennessee’s schedule, said her initial reaction was “Holy crap.” Jose said that Joey “hit the lottery” with this opportunity.
“We were just grateful that he got a scholarship and graduated with his degree from App State,” Lydia said. “Now you’re taking it to another level.”
Joey has looked at the schedule, too, but hasn’t dwelled on it.
But he is thankful. His football journey could have ended multiple times. He wanted to be a fireman to “help people and save the world.”
This season, he’ll have to settle for helping the Vols and saving their season.
(Top photo: Reinhold Matay / Imagn Images)
