UNLV Sums Up College Football Today
Smack in the middle of both the NIL and realignment chaos
UNLV is probably not the first school you’d think of if you were looking for an instructive case study in modern college football. That’s a basketball school, right? 1990 National Championship? Jerry Tarkanian? LJ?
Wrong! They’re ranked for the first time in history right now, coming in at No. 23 in the last coaches poll. They’ve already beaten two Big 12 teams, taking down Houston and Kansas. And while I’m a little biased in their favor — I went to high school with their defensive coordinator, who’s not even an acquaintance at this point but was always a very nice dude — they had all the makings of a landmark season that would put the program on the national radar. I’d been pulling for them to succeed.
So I must admit, I was a little dismayed to see the distinctly 2024 situation unfolding there right now. Starting quarterback Matthew Sluka, who had starred in the team’s 3-0 start, says he’s quitting the team, hinting at an NIL dispute. Here’s that statement:
It’s since come out that Sluka’s referring to a $100,000 guarantee that was made to him verbally by an assistant coach (the team’s offensive coordinator, so my alma mater’s good name is safely secure — phew) and also appears to have been made without the blessing of head coach Barry Odom or the school’s NIL collective. AKA, the people who would sign that check, both figuratively and literally.
There was nothing approaching six figures on paper. According to Sluka’s agent and said NIL collective, the only formal offer made to Sluka was $3,000 per month for a period of four months, which is… *checks math* … less than $100,000.
In short, Sluka says: I was told that I’d get six figures when I transferred here, and now that it’s become clear that I’m not going to see that money, I’m gonna go ahead and save my eligibility for another year while I still can. (If he were to play more than four games, he would lose that redshirt eligibility.)
This sucks. We’re allowed to say that. This team was going to be really good this year, and now they may not be.1 The fans are well within their rights to be frustrated.
I’d probably just be more frustrated with the coaching staff, particular the rogue coordinator, in view of the information we have today. Granted, Sluka bears some responsibility for (apparently) trusting a verbal offer that wasn’t backed by a real commitment, but given the gray areas in which these deals have long been made and, to a significant extent, still are, I’m willing to cut him a little more slack than I am the program.
Many will point to the Jaden Rashada fiasco from a few years ago, and we’re in similar territory here. The difference is that Sluka started playing, played very well, and then decided to stop, which makes it all the more of a shock move.
As to their side of the story, the UNLV athletics department said the following:
The school’s NIL collective also released a statement, reading:
I’ll cop to some priors here, in terms of institutional skepticism, but none of the above changes my read on this. The invocation of NCAA pay-for-play rules and Nevada law (!!) is especially rich.
What I’m reading is what I already assumed: there was nothing down on paper, which does not respond to Sluka’s assertions of what was said. Sluka might’ve thought/hoped that that formal offer would materialize, but it didn’t, and therein lies our dispute.
For Sluka’s part, this would all be a strange thing to make up and then decide to skip a highly successful season over, so I’m inclined to believe him when he says that he was offered that money at one point. It’s possible that he wasn’t, and he started seeing dollar signs at the prospect of cashing in on higher-profile success. Maybe he got greedy. But until I have evidence to suggest that’s the case, I’m leaning toward Sluka’s account here.
So maybe it was only in passing, and maybe he put too much stock in a promise that wasn’t backed by any real authority. Still, it’s not hard to imagine a scenario wherein the coordinator talks with the family and offers the money as a means to get him to come to UNLV, thinking — wrongly — that he’ll be able to find the money later. It is for the team’s starting quarterback, after all. If they don’t have NIL funds for QB1, who do they have NIL funds for?2
As far as the reaction goes, I’ve seen some pretty dumb ‘He’s bailing on his team!’ takes that I’d like to respond to. When you take a job on the premise that it pays $100k, and you find out you’re actually only going to be paid $12k, then yeah, you’d prolly take your talents elsewhere too.
You can say that college football shouldn’t be a job, he should just be there to have fun and learn and such, but that train left the station some time ago. UNLV is indeed a big enough program to pay their players, as evidenced by the fact that they are. They’re just not paying them as much as they (allegedly) say they will.
In general, I’m against calling someone a quitter when they decide not to be taken advantage of. That’s stupid, and that’s exactly the sort of attitude that lets a program get away with misleading their players.3
It’s key to note that Matthew Sluka, for all his abilities, is probably not looking at a top-flight future as a pro.4 He’s an unlikely candidate to be drafted to the NFL, and he only has one season of college eligibility remaining. This is the biggest chance he has to make some meaningful money on his football talent, and that is what makes him such an NIL poster child. Sluka is the archetypal player that this whole revolution was supposed to help.
No dice this time, and perhaps the bigger shame is that taking this stand will dissuade other schools from wanting to deal with him. I hope that isn’t the case, but I won’t be shocked if it turns some schools off. ‘Distractions’ and all that.
But wait! There’s more! Because this is 2024, Sluka is only playing at UNLV because the team lost its last promising quarterback to the transfer portal. Jayden Maiava was the Mountain West Conference’s Freshman of the Year after leading the Rebels to the conference championship game last year.
Maiava’s not even playing these days, backing up Miller Moss at USC. It stands to reason that UNLV might’ve been pretty damn good again if he had stayed, and I’m sure coach Odom is wishing he could do as an NFL team does — or that overeager friend in your fantasy league — and sign somebody off the waiver wire.
But he’s stuck. It’s tough work running a college program these days, and it gets all the harder when you’re still negotiating with players you thought you had signed.5
And there’s even more, because UNLV has been in the middle of a transfer decision of their own this very same week. As of right now, it appears they’ll be standing pat in the Mountain West, but until there’s a formal announcement — something on paper, you might say — that’s in flux.
Why? Because — emphasis mine — they only “agreed to a memorandum of understanding to return to the Mountain West, but that was predicated on all eight remaining schools agreeing to stay.”
When Utah State bolted for the Pac-12, as did four other schools, it took a financial commitment from the Mountain West to convince UNLV and Air Force to stay. The schools wanted assurances that they would get significant lump payments, partly derived from the exit fees charged to the departing schools, on top of guaranteed media distribution money. It’s on back of those assurances, to the reported tune of about $25M apiece, that they’re staying.
If I were Sluka, then, here’s what I’d tell the team. I agreed to a memorandum of understanding to return to play quarterback, but that was predicated on the school honoring its prior commitments to pay me.
And if I were to have a word with this offensive coordinator, who’s probably been called into the principal’s office more than once over all this, then I would offer a piece of friendly advice: don’t write checks that your NIL collective won’t cash.
One last caveat here. I wouldn’t blame someone for looking at this whole situation and worrying about the precedent. Who’s to say that future players at smaller schools won’t play a few games to demonstrate their worth and then sit out the rest of the year in order to seek a payday the following year? I wouldn’t expect that to totally take over the sport, owing to the sitting out part, but we could see more of it, and adding any further chaos to the merry-go-round feels unwelcome at this point.6
With that and the rest in mind, allow me to be the ___illionth person to point out that the Sluka saga is all made possible by the complete lack of oversight by the NCAA. The sport is terminally deregulated, and that still needs to change. When there are no rules, it’s tough to hold anyone to account for breaking them.
Everything encircling UNLV right now is so perfectly indicative of the state of college sports, and it goes a long way to demonstrating why college GM is such a hot job market right now. Maybe they can pull in Woj to clean this mess up before basketball season starts in St. Bonaventure.7
Also, This
💼 As to the Pac-2/7/8/12 aspect of this, I did feel bad leaving this out of last week’s piece. Even with UNLV and Air Force staying, the Mountain West has been left in a tough place, raided to the tune of five schools. We would do well to remember that they, rather than the only recently demoted Pac-2/7/8/12, are more of an underdog in the broader conference landscape. So go Mountain West! The Pac-2/7/8/12 has now been turned down by UNLV, San Jose State, Memphis, Tulane, UTSA, and South Florida. They now turn to… Gonzaga, maybe? The Dakotas? Montana? Idaho? We shall see, but sure looks like it’s gonna get weird.
📺 One of my favorite things about visiting home is getting exposure to game show conspiracies. My mom is absolutely convinced that Wheel of Fortune! is rigged to cheap out on contestants, and while I was skeptical to begin with, the more I watched… the more I saw. Stay safe out there, letter-guessers. (And in related news, the reigning champ on Jeopardy! right now — who happens to be Lessons in Chemistry author Bonnie Garmus’ husband — is amazing. I am in awe of his only somewhat off-putting genius.)
✍️ Shoutout to a great read in Rolling Stone this week: “Is Trump’s Whole Political Career Just a Cockeyed Revenge Plot Against the NFL?” And while I’m at it, allow me to recommend how I found it: the Sunday Longread, a newsletter put together by a new friend here on the ‘Stack,
. Great stuff in there every week.🏈 Are the Bills… amazing…? I have a hat, I have a crewneck, and I have a vision of glory.
🐯 At this very moment, I’m on a plane headed for New Orleans, followed by a (party) bus headed for Baton Rouge. I will be carrying out an on-the-ground investigation of how fun an LSU tailgate is with ~20 of my closest friends. I’ll report back, provided we make it back. Any tips, hit us up.
🎙️ And if you haven’t listened already, there is a certain podcast series of mine that lays out the circumstances that allowed for this whole Sluka sitch to happen. Tune in, y’all!
On the bright side, my cursory look at the subreddits suggests that UNLV fans are low key optimistic about their other senior transfer, Hajj-Malik Williams. Sluka’s situation aside, it would be cool to see Williams step in and keep winning.
Very underrated question surrounding this story, by the way. UNLV is not a Power 5 program, so I don’t expect them to be throwing around SEC money, but head coach Barry Odom is making $1.75M this year.
And not for nothing, I have a recurring problem with this in the pro leagues too. Teams get away with a lot on the basis that it’s noble for players to accept a below-market deal if it helps the organization field a better roster overall. Maybe there’s a slight case to be made for that when you’re talking about a true-blue star in the league, but generally speaking: fuck that. Don’t go out there and brashly demand more than the going rate, but you would never give that advice to someone in any other line of work. Hey there, trauma nurse. We think you’re great, and we’d love to give you a raise, but we think that we’d actually prefer to make this more of a team-friendly environment and cut your salary to be distributed among some new hires we’re bringing in. Sound good?
My other Sluka connection is that, prior to UNLV, he played four years for Holy Cross, putting an absolute beating on my other alma mater, Colgate, for the last three years as the starter. I’m talking 42-10 in 2021, 35-10 in 2022, and 47-7 in 2023. So good riddance, my guy. Wishing you well, but stay away from Hamilton, NY.
Paging Haason Reddick.
We’re already seeing guys sit over lack of playing time to preserve redshirt eligibility in similar fashion, USC DT Bear Alexander being a prominent example this week. And no, I don’t think that’s great for the sport. But is it any better if that player gets benched and can’t seek another chance? I don’t see the improvement.
He has some recent experience with contract negotiations, no? Ba-zing!