UNLV QB Sluka’s NIL Situation Shows Just How Fractured College Football Is

It was a matter of time before we reached this point. A disgruntled quarterback claiming he never paid the money he was promised months ago. A university—or a “collective” or whatever we’re calling the entities funneling money to student athletes these days—saying that said quarterback created a football ultimatum to continue playing.

In a business or any normal setting with reasonable checks and balances, these types of matters would be handled with care. Or maybe they would go to court. Either way, a process with proper guardrails with reasonable expectations would be followed.

Those guardrails do not exist in college football, and the person or governing body capable of implementing them truly doesn’t exist, either.

How did UNLV capture the CFB spotlight days before Alabama and Georgia will compete in one of the largest regular-season games in recent memory, you ask? Because no one did anything to stop it, and chaos was ultimately going to be the outcome overall.

Here’s what we know, although it cannot be stated enough how little that actually is.

Matthew Sluka transferred to UNLV this past offseason after four seasons at Holy Cross. At the FCS level, he delivered a handful of dazzling moments. That included rushing for 330 yards in a single game.

Since arriving at UNLV, Sulka has led the Rebels to a 3-0 start. In three games he’s thrown for 318 yards and rushed for 253 yards in those three games. In that time, UNLV blossomed into a potential College Football Playoff contender.

As of now, this is what is fact. We know that Sulka announced his intension to redshirt the rest of the season, citing commitments—aka financial guarantees—that were not fulfilled. Sluka’s NIL agent, Marcus Cromartie, added further context, telling ESPN that Sulka was verbally guaranteed a minimum of $100,000 by a member of the coaching staff.

UNLV, in response to the claims, has given its side of the story—stating that Sulka’s representation “made financial demands upon the University and its NIL collective in order to continue playing.”

It should be noted that following Sulka’s announcement, another UNLV player, running back Michael Allen, announced his intention to redshirt as well. Allen transferred after two seasons at NC State, saying his decision to leave the school because “expectations for opportunities unfortunately were not met.”

The truth behind this flurry of movement is important. With that acknowledged, it’s hard to imagine that we’ll ever know exactly what was and wasn’t said given the state of these discussions. The fact that an additional player has come forward certainly carries weight, but it doesn’t mean the book should be closed just yet.

If anything, what snowballed at UNLV is likely to become an issue at other programs across college football. This is by no means the only place where compensation is a messy situation. The fact that this announcement has gotten so much attention will likely prompt others to speak up.

Also, let’s not forget about the timing. Current NCAA rules allow players to compete in up to four games before redshirting to maintain eligibility for a given season. As Week 5 begins, this situation is all but certainly to arise in other places.

And none of it should come as a surprise. Sulka’s stance and UNLV’s rebuttal are not a product of one player or one situation. This moment was decades in the making. More recently, and this part can’t be emphasized enough, it’s the result of a lack of guidance and control that the schools and conferences have been given.

Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) was born after the courts said it was legal and possible. From there, it was up to boosters, collectives, players and schools, in no particular order, to determine the ways to make it so.

Leaving these decisions up to these parties with intentions of winning or earning money was always ripe with challenges. This was never a good idea from the start, although we clearly stumbled into it.

From the moment NIL became a reality, we wondered when this arrangement of handshakes and verbal agreements would come undone. For decades, this has been how schools operated. Players were paid under the table, although these agreements and disagreements never made it to social media or the public eye. These arrangements were against arbitrary rules after all, which made for much quieter discussions outside the public eye.

Now that NIL is both legal and widely accepted, the turmoil that comes from these unusual, broken deals will be put out in the open for the world to process. A lack of documentation provides little to go off—other than the words of PR companies, NIL agencies and social media accounts trying to shape their stances to their liking.

And it’s not their fault. This is the fault of the NCAA, which avoided this very topic for far too long. It’s the fault of the schools and the conferences, which choose to deal with this when it was forced to. It’s the fault of a broken system that was not fixed but rather broken in new and exciting ways. It’s what happens when a complicated matter suffers from a lack of leadership and guidance.

Would making college athletes actual employees fix this? Will schools paying players directly—which is scheduled to happen next year—make many of these problems suddenly disappear? Will these very public, very damning situations create a better process for documentation and accountability to exist in some shape or form.

The answer to all these questions is undeniable, although college football’s flimsy structure coupled with the infusion of cash and the ever-increasing pressure to win has created a delicate concoction.

Is this suddenly going to improve? Absolutely not. In fact, the sport is as fractured as it has ever been, through remade conferences and remade postseasons and the endless cash grab for all parties.

As the stakes have gotten higher, the rules have gotten murkier. The number of entities involved has grown. Things are out in the open now, although college football still behaves like it once did, when none of this was above board and a handshake was good enough.