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    • UNLV vs. Fresno State is the end of the Sluka era as college QB leaves with NIL money
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    UNLV vs. Fresno State is the end of the Sluka era as college QB leaves with NIL money

    Vaseline Posted on

    In 2021, the Supreme Court ruled that the NCAA could not bar student-athletes from benefiting from education-related payments. Better known as the name, image and likeness (NIL) ruling, the Supreme Court said student-athletes could be paid for the use of their name, image and likeness without jeopardizing their “amateur status.” What happened in the aftermath of that decision can only be described as utter chaos.

    Two big NIL-related college football stories in recent days are a case in point.

    The Supreme Court said student-athletes could be paid for the use of their name, likeness and likeness without jeopardizing their “amateur status.”

    Tuesday night, UNLV started quarterback Matthew Sluka announced he left the Rebels’ 3-0 football program. Sluka transferred to the school from Holy Cross after last season. His agent told ESPN that Sluka’s decision was motivated, at least in part, by a verbal offer of $100,000 promised by an assistant coach. Sluka’s father claims that UNLV head coach Barry Odom claimed the verbal offer was not valid because it did not come from him.

    UNLV has a different perspective. The university said in a statement that the “student-athlete representative made financial demands on the university and its NIL collective in order to continue playing.” The school claimed that while it had “honored all previously agreed upon scholarships for Matthew Sluka,” Sluka’s team’s demands were interpreted “as a violation of NCAA pay-for-play rules, as well as Nevada state law.”

    There’s more: UNLV has a fan- and alumni-driven collective that helps players pay for their name, image and likeness. The Friends of UNLV collective says it has no record of Sluka being owed any money, aside from the $3,000 payment paid to him over the summer for an engagement in which he attended.

    UNLV quarterback Matthew Sluka
    UNLV quarterback Matthew Sluka #3 runs with the ball during the college football game against Utah Tech at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas on September 7, 2024. Daniel Jacobi II / Las Vegas Review-Journal/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

    Sluka’s departure so early in the season means he will have another year of eligibility if he transfers to another program. But it also means he let his teammates down after one of the best starts in school history, with wins over Big 12 foes Houston and Kansas.

    Either way, this “new normal” for college athletics is feeling more and more like the Wild West. As a vocal conservative sports and news commentator Clay Travis pointed out to us carefullyEven professional sports don’t have “perpetual free agency” that allows you to leave a team and join another team four games per season.

    In another corner of the internet, controversial Barstool Sports founder and CEO Dave Portnoy took to social media on Thursday bid up to $3 million dollars annually to the top (and eligible) quarterbacks committed to his alma mater, Michigan. Four years ago, if a coach bought too many cheeseburgers for a starving player on his roster, the NCAA could sanction him. Now you have sports media company owners offering suitcases of cash to student-athletes.

    All a college player has to do these days is endorse a product or appear in a car ad somewhere, and a “friend of the program” can pay him whatever he wants. Portnoy suggested he pay the players through a “$3 million marketing deal.” “I think that’s legal,” he told listeners. And he’s probably right. The NCAA has disclosure agreements in place, but the organization doesn’t do nearly enough to prevent teams from essentially putting together the best squads that money can buy.

    Now the NCAA is proposing a salary cap of $17 million to $22 million, similar to the way professional sports teams operate. This salary cap would cover all athletic programs under each school’s umbrella, not just football. Many big questions remain unanswered. How would this money be distributed at schools with multiple high-profile athletic programs? For example, a school with a strong women’s volleyball program might also have a top 20 football team. How do you determine how much money goes where? And would this lead to absurd and unfortunate rivalries between athletes at the same school? This certainly seems to be where collegiate athletics is going.

    For years, proponents of bloody murder have screamed about how schools took advantage of student athletes by raking in tens of millions of dollars from their performances. Now many of those same advocates seem content to watch the entire collegiate sports system begin to implode as the system tries to catch up amid a new and very complicated world order.

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