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UNLV vs. Fresno State is the end of the Sluka era as the college QB leaves for zero funds

In 2021, the Supreme Court ruled that the NCAA could not prohibit student-athletes from benefiting from education-related payments. The Supreme Court, better known as the “Name, Image, and Likeness” (NIL) ruling, declared that student-athletes could be paid for the use of their name, image and likeness without jeopardizing their “amateur” status . What followed this decision can only be described as complete chaos.

Two major 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, image and likeness without jeopardizing their “amateur” status.

UNLV starts at quarterback on Tuesday night 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 at least partially driven by a verbal offer of $100,000 promised by an assistant coach. Sluka's father claims UNLV head coach Barry Odom claimed the verbal offer was invalid because it did not come from him.

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

What's more, UNLV has a fan- and alumni-driven collective that helps pay players for their name, image and likeness. The Friends of UNLV collective says there is no record of Sluka being owed any money other than a $3,000 payment he received over the summer for an engagement he attended.

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

Because Sluka is leaving so early in the season, he will retain his eligibility for another year if he transfers to another program. But it also means he has 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 increasingly feeling like the Wild West. As a vocal conservative sports and news commentator Clay Travis pointed this out to youEven in professional sports, there is no such thing as “indefinite free agency,” which allows you to leave one team after four games of a season and join another.

In another corner of the internet, controversial Barstool Sports founder and CEO Dave Portnoy took to social media on Thursday Offer up to $3 million annually to the best (and qualified) 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 there are sports media company owners offering suitcases full of cash to student-athletes.

These days, all a college player has to do 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 paying players through a “$3 million marketing agreement.” “I think this is 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 stop teams from assembling essentially the best rosters money can buy.

Now the NCAA is proposing a salary cap of $17 million to $22 million, similar to professional sports teams. 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 to schools with multiple high-profile athletic programs? For example, a school with a strong women's volleyball program might also have a top-20 soccer team. How do you decide how much money goes where? And would this lead to absurd and unfortunate rivalries between athletes from the same school? That certainly seems to be the direction college athletics is headed.

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

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