We are talking again about UNLV football. That’s twice this week. And that’s a lot. It’s probably twice more than anyone’s had a reason to do in nearly 40 years, going back to when Randall Cunningham hit it big with the Philadelphia Eagles. And then it was as basic as this: Oh, he went there?
And then we went back to forgetting the Rebels even had a team.
College football’s changing dynamics hit UNLV upside the helmet Wednesday, with a cacophony of conflicting reports and releases resulting from the decision of Rebels quarterback Matthew Sluka to walk away from the team after leading them to a 3-0 start that included victories over Kansas and Houston.
And there was, as well, the inevitable hysteria from the protectors of College Football As It Once Was, insisting the sport is in decline and greater calamity is ahead.
Those who lament the sport is different miss the essential point: It needed to be different.
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This episode began with Sluka announcing via social media that he would redshirt in the 2024 season and no longer compete this season with the Rebels. He explained he committed to UNLV based on “certain representations” made to him during the recruiting process that he said were not fulfilled following his enrollment.
It got really interesting from there. There was a report he’d been promised a $100,000 Name/Image/Likeness arrangement by an assistant coach. Then another insisting all commitments to Sluka had been met. And then came the one that explained neither the player nor his representative had obtained that promise in writing. And that the agent was not certified in the state of Nevada. And then came the collective that cooperates with UNLV sports to declare they had made no such arrangement with Sluka or anyone in his stead. And, at last, an official statement from the athletic department:
“Football player Matthew Sluka's representative made financial demands upon the University and its NIL collective in order to continue playing. UNLV Athletics interpreted these demands as a violation of the NCAA pay-for-play rules, as well as Nevada state law. UNLV does not engage in such activity, nor does it respond to implied threats. UNLV has honored all previously agreed-upon scholarships for Matthew Sluka.
“UNLV has conducted its due diligence and will continue to operate its programs within the framework of NCAA rules and regulations, as well as Nevada state laws.”
It was quite the adventure.
Coupled with the discussion early this week about whether UNLV would depart the Mountain West along with five other league members, it might have been the Rebels’ newsiest week ever that didn’t involve the great Jerry Tarkanian.
It was not, however, another piece of evidence that college football – or college sports generally -- is doomed. In fact, the installation of a legitimate postseason playoff for 2024 is one of the main reasons this UNLV story even registered. If Sluka had walked away even from a 3-0 team whose best-case scenario was a trip to the Los Angeles Bowl, the story wouldn’t have interested most any journalist beyond the Rebels beat writer for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
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But with this perfect start presenting the possibility of qualifying for the first 12-team College Football Playoff, it mattered.
The sport is doing great. There are high-profile games on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and multiple cable channels and streaming services each Saturday from noon past midnight, as well as the new phenomenon of prime time Friday night games. NIL hasn't diminished that sparkle.
Sluka put his own interests above the team by choosing to leave now. He can justify this by explaining he was promised a certain degree of compensation that was not conveyed, and critics such as SiriusXM radio's Ben Hartsock are free to trace this “selfish behavior” to the first players who began to pass on participating in bowl games to protect themselves against injury in advance of the NFL Draft.
Christian McCaffrey & Leonard Fournette are patients zero. Once they broke the seal of selfish behavior (Opting out of bowl games), quitting on teams is now "normal" behavior. This is our culture now. Players opting out of high school teams, quitting teams for "meaningless"… https://t.co/lGGyNZmaJJ
— Ben Hartsock (@BenHartsock) September 25, 2024
“Tolerating this selfish behavior encourages the next person to make a selfish decision,” he said on Twitter.
It’s not as though we never had selfish athletes before, though. They just have more freedom (through the transfer portal and relaxed redshirt rules) and incentive (through NIL payments) to exercise that impulse.
Those coaches who argued for a world in which athletes could compete for a portion of the season and then redshirt for reasons other than injury surely did not see the unintended consequences of that rule change. It’s now feasible for an athlete to take the path Sluka is pioneering: Putting some winning performances on tape and then leaving that program in search of a more attractive arrangement. Anyone predicting this will become a contagion, though, is overlooking that colleges easily can protect themselves by assuring their program's commitments are more tangible than in this case.
There are those, perhaps most prominently Green Bay basketball coach Doug Gottlieb, who strongly contend scholarship athletes in general have gotten a good deal over the years: high-end training toward the possibility of a professional sports career along with room, board, books, fees and tuition. The deal improved with the enhancements to facilities and travel and, nearly a decade ago, the addition of cost-of-attendance payments.
College coaches, though, were getting a good deal when the highest-paid among them was earning roughly $3 million. Then Texas decided in 2009 to reward Mack Brown with a salary in excess of $5 million annually, and we began the rapid ascent to Kirby Smart earning $13 million this season. There’s no way, in that environment, to reasonably contend it’s not justified for the athletes to be earning significant money in exchange for their performances.
The value of that compensation will vary from program to program, from athlete to athlete. That’s how it is in real life. And if we want college football to teach real-world lessons to young men, Sluka certainly learned his: It’s not a contract unless you get it in writing. That at least gives one a chance to be treated fairly.
Whether anyone will offer a significant sum to a quarterback who completed 43.8 percent of his passes for an average of 106 yards a game and then walked away from an undefeated season, well, that would seem to be an acquired taste.
