College sports aren’t dead. College sports aren’t dying. Our collective lust of overreaction and constant need to live in the zeitgeist may have you thinking otherwise in the last 24 hours.
Change, though? The end (of what has long been) is nigh.
Former UNLV quarterback Matt Sluka chose to redshirt the rest of the season after starting for the UNLV football program the first three games and leading it to a Top-25 ranking. He isn’t hurt. Instead, he says the school and/or its associated NIL collective middleman, not a literal man, have not consummated promised compensation. Or, in layman’s terms: Sluka says UNLV owes him money and/or benefits.
UNLV is doing what organizations always do. It’s saying – without saying – the person is lying. UNLV has met all of its obligations, according to – wait, checking…yeah – UNLV.
As much as I may want to pick one side (labor; always labor) over the other, reasonable people can have different perspectives on which party is in the wrong here. And that’s regardless of whether Matt Sluka was or was not paid.
Don’t Hate the Literal Player, Hate the Game
This is what the NCAA hath wrought. The blame lays at its feet.
It could have gotten out in front of this. Instead of finding practical solutions for an issue that was clearly coming to a head – Ed O’Bannon played in the 1990s and sued the NCAA for compensation in the early 2010s after seeing his likeness in a video game – the governing body for college sports dragged its feet. It hoped its money, history and the American tendency of fearing change would be enough to stave off any recompense to players. Now, we have a new problem.
Michael McCann at Sportico, a journalistic outfit that focuses on sports business, put it perfectly in a column Wednesday when he wrote that “the situation is complicated.”
Oral contracts, which is what Sluka says he received from UNLV offensive coordinator Brennan Marion last winter regarding payments, are not enforceable in the state of Nevada if they can’t be performed in one year, according to McCann. That means Sluka, to get what he’s owed, would have to prove, with witnesses, an agreement took place and all the stipulations of the time-frame also came with the agreement. A hard ask. But because the NCAA allows players to enter into agreements with institutions or with persons employed by institutions, flies have entered the ointment.
Consider, too, where former Arkansas football assistant Barry Odom, now UNLV’s head man, enters the picture. While Odom might not have been in direct NIL talks initially with Sluka and his people, things apparently changed after the Rebels’ notched their third win this season in beating Kansas.
Matt Sluka’s father Bob Sluka said Odom and Marcus Cromartie, Sluka’s agent who played college football under Bret Bielema, spoke on Sept. 19, according to an ESPN report. Odom “refused to uphold the agreement, instead offering $3,000 for relocation costs and asserting that the offer wasn’t valid because it didn’t come from him. Sluka’s camp contends they never went to Odom seeking more money, only what they were promised up front.”
As Bob Sluka sees it, the actual amount of money at play takes a backseat in importance to the principle of the matter: coaches and collectives should fulfill their promises. “He’s not the first athlete to have this happen. We’ve heard it from a million kids that they don’t get their money,” he told ESPN. A bit later, he continued “We’re not going to have Barry Odom just stand up and say, ‘F you, I’m not paying you, get your ass out on the field.’”
UNLV Football: The Oppressed Vs. The Oppressors
That’s a whole lot of frustration taken out on coaches when, really, it’s an institution that engendered the broken system in which they have to operate. Basically, the NCAA is a microcosm of the American political system. Power wants to keep power. Such a statement is hardly a shock considering the NCAA used politics and politicians for years upon years to stay firm in avoidance of compensation for players. Now, because the NCAA lost their fight, we’re all – fans, media, players, coaches, administrators and state governments – out to sea on how to enforce, or not enforce, rules and regulations regarding NIL payments and benefits.
Things are also complicated by a lack of clarity from even state governments regarding those rules and regulations. It isn’t as simple as conservative states will pay labor less than progressive states, which is generally the case with quote-unquote regular jobs. Every state with a school in the Southeastern Conference is a conservative state, including Georgia, which did, yes, vote for the Democratic nominee in the 2020 presidential elections. If the SEC wants to stay at the top of college football, schools are going to have to be allowed to pony up the cash. Players will go elsewhere if they don’t.
Sluka’s situation is a drop in the bucket compared to what’s on the horizon. Some of those “million kids” that Bob Sluka referenced are going to do what Sluka did whether or not he ultimately finds success in receiving payments. The NCAA has shown it’s ill-prepared with one player pushing the limits. What happens when dozens more do?
Perhaps the floodgates are already opening. UNLV running back Michael Allen announced his intention Wednesday to sit out the season because of “on-field opportunities.” Not long afterward, USC lineman Bear Alexander announced he was opting to bench himself in order to wait for the transfer portal to open because, well, he apparently felt like he was already being kept on the bench too long as it was.
And while both may say their decisions weren’t because of NIL reasons, the best NIL opportunities come to those who see the field more often.
On Wednesday night, the nascent movement reached the SEC when On3 reported that Mississippi State wide receiver Creed Whittmore was opting to transfer as well.
No End In Sight with Matt Sluka-Type Incidents
Attorney Tom Mars, an Arkansas-based lawyer who specializes in litigation and contracts and who has represented – you guessed it – former Arkansas football coach Bret Bielema, tartly laid out the crux of the matter in McCann’s piece:
“You don’t make a six-figure NIL deal the way you’d run a Kool-Aid stand.”
Yet here we are. A whole bunch of people who have no idea what they’re doing – from young adults negotiating for themselves, like Sluka initially did, to coaches who don’t know what they’re actually negotiating – have mucked the water. And, you know what? Good on them. Sluka has since hired Marcus Cromartie to do his negotiating, furthering the cause.
Progress has been made and players are receiving some compensation. Kudos to Sluka and others who see the system’s flaws and exploit them, in much the same way college athletic department administrators and coaches did the same before the NIL became a thing. Barry Odom, a friend of Arkansas football coach Sam Pittman and potential future Hogs head coaching candidate, is caught in the whirlwind.
It seems everybody is able to speak freely about their side of the story in regards to his UNLV football program, while his position mandates he must essentially stay muzzled, throwing out vagaries like this:
This whole mess is and is not his fault. He can thank the system.
Progress comes slowly, but it does come. The only question is who it will come for next.
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