The intersection of finance, gambling, and college sports has never been bigger - and more complicated.
Earlier this week, quarterback Matthew Sluka announced his departure from the undefeated UNLV Rebels football team which he had led to a 3-0 start and the program’s first-ever ranking in a major poll in its history. The cause? Sluka’s agent Marcus Cromartie told ESPN that UNLV failed to make good on an alleged verbal offering of $100,000 from an assistant coach, which the QB’s father Bob Sluka said was rescinded by UNLV head coach Barry Odom in a later phone conversation.
The only money Sluka has received from UNLV was $3,000 for moving expenses, according to Cromartie. Since the $100,000 offer apparently came via verbal offer from UNLV offensive coordinator Brennan Marion, both the players’ camp and the school have varying versions of what actually happened to trigger the starting quarterback’s departure.
Nevertheless, Circa CEO Derek Stevens and vice president Mike Palm hoped to rectify the situation by offering to pay the $100,000, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. However, that conversation did not go far.
“Derek and I talked about the situation and thought it would be worth it for $100,000 to keep the Rebels’ playoff hopes alive,” Palm admitted to the Review-Journal Thursday.
A university source confirmed that Palm reached out to UNLV with the offer on Wednesday, but no further discussion was had.
The bigger issue
The entire game of college athletics has forever changed since the inception of NIL (name-image-likeness) which effectively allows players to get paid for the value they create in their sport, to their teams, and to their universities’ brands. In the current system for doing so, schools can make financial offers to players during the recruiting process, but can’t directly fulfill those promises. To that end, UNLV said they interpreted Sluka’s accusations “as a violation of the NCAA pay-for-play rules, as well as Nevada state law.”
Schools set up NIL collectives whose sole purposes are to raise funds to help the programs fulfill the financial promises made to players without it coming directly from the universities themselves. That’s why the Friends of UNLV collective is a major piece in this complicated puzzle as the Rebels’ source for NIL funding.
The collective said there were “no formal NIL offers made during Mr. Sluka's recruitment process” and that it did not “agree to any NIL offers while he was part of the team” aside from compensating Sluka $3,000 for completing a community engagement event over the summer.
The oft-controversial founder of Barstool Sports Dave Portnoy started more internet chaos by stating he’d pay up to $3 million to get his alma mater Michigan “a top 10 QB every year with NIL.”
I will go out and get Michigan a top 10 QB every year with NIL #GoBlue
— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) September 26, 2024
Full @Barstoolpickem here: https://t.co/RgTVCUWhK9 pic.twitter.com/Pr9DPpvVHb
Although Barstool know longer runs the Barstool Sportsbook, the media giant announced just hours after the Kansas City Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII that DraftKings is once again the exclusive sports betting partner of Barstool Sports.
This and Stevens’ six-figure offer to keep Sluka under center at UNLV begs the question: How close are we to casino and sportsbooks operators getting into the NIL business?
