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On the morning of Sept. 23, UNLV starting quarterback Matthew Sluka walked into offensive coordinator Brennan Marion’s office before practice with a shocking announcement. Sluka, a Holy Cross graduate transfer in his first year at UNLV, said he had not received the name, image and likeness money his agent said he had been promised when Sluka committed to the program in January.
If that wasn’t fixed, Sluka said, he was going to sit out the rest of the season to preserve his final year of eligibility.
Sluka then went to head coach Barry Odom’s office to tell him the same thing. Odom was furious. UNLV, off to its first 3-0 start in 40 years after upsetting Big 12 foes Houston and Kansas, was preparing to host Fresno State that weekend in its Mountain West opener. Marion wanted an answer by that night whether Sluka was in or out.
That morning’s practice would be Sluka’s last with the Rebels. The following night, he announced his decision on social media.
“I committed to UNLV based on certain representations that were made to me, which were not upheld after I enrolled,” he wrote. “Despite discussions, it became clear that these commitments would not be upheld after I enrolled.”
— Matthew Sluka (@MatthewSluka) September 25, 2024
By letter of the NCAA law, a school like UNLV is not allowed to promise an NIL deal to land an athlete’s commitment. But it happens every day. And with the NCAA’s enforcement arm hamstrung by several recent court decisions, there are few, if any, consequences for bad actors and broken promises.
“The way I understand (it) is, it’s illegal to use a recruiting inducement and tell a kid that you can give them this amount of money to come to your school,” one Power 4 chief of staff said, asking for anonymity to discuss NIL processes freely. “It’s a joke, because everyone’s doing it, and they’re just putting themselves at risk.”
In Sluka’s case, his father, Bob, and agent, Marcus Cromartie of Equity Sports, claim that Marion offered them $100,000 in a January phone call. But both UNLV and its collective, Friends of UNILV, insist there was never any six-figure offer.
Marion, Odom and Cromartie declined to comment for this story.
Sluka, a two-time finalist for the Walter Payton Award (FCS Player of the Year), graduated from Holy Cross last spring. His former coach, Bob Chesney, now at James Madison, told local reporters Monday that the quarterback had opportunities to leave there for “hundreds of thousands of dollars” but remained for four seasons.
“He’s not a guy that can be bought,” Chesney said.
Sluka arrived at UNLV in June but did not start classes until Aug. 26. Cromartie did not contact the collective for the first time until Aug. 29, according to emails reviewed by The Athletic. That is when he sent an email to an address listed on the Friends of UNILV website, introducing himself as Sluka’s agent and inquiring about potential NIL opportunities. Shannon Cottrell, the general manager of client relations for the collective, informed Cromartie he needed to register with UNLV as Sluka’s representative. Those emails show no mention of the $100,000 allegedly promised.
Cromartie and Bob Sluka attended UNLV’s Sept. 13 win at Kansas and exchanged pleasantries with Marion. Bob Sluka said Cromartie was eager to speak with Hunkie Cooper, a former receivers coach who is now the Director of Football Player Development on Odom’s support staff, because “that’s the guy who’s avoiding us right now about the money,” Bob Sluka recalled Cromartie saying.
“So (Cooper) came out, and he was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, I owe you a phone call.’ Call me Thursday (Sept. 19),’ he tells Marcus,” Sluka said. “(But during that call), they say that, ‘We’re not paying ($100,000), and the only thing we can offer is $3,000 for four months, take it or leave it.’”
In an email sent that same day, Cottrell asked Cromartie to confirm he had recently agreed to a $3,000-per-month offer with Cooper. Cromartie responded the next day saying they were “still negotiating” and to hold off proceeding.
Five days later, Sluka was gone. By choosing to walk when he did, Sluka preserved his final year of eligibility under NCAA rules governing redshirt years, which historically have allowed players an extra year to develop or recover from injury. (Sluka, like others who were student-athletes in 2020, has an additional year of eligibility due to COVID-19.)
“It’s just odd that in our interactions with the agent starting on Aug. 29, there’s no mention of money owed,” said Rob Sine, CEO of Blueprint Sports Agency, which runs UNLV’s collective. “The agent had multiple opportunities to raise that to our attention. He never brought it up. So I’m just scratching my head here.”
Sine, whose company manages 25 schools’ collectives, said the typical NIL budget for an entire Mountain West-level football roster is $300,000-$500,000.
“This is the first situation we’ve seen where both sides basically said, ‘Nope, we’ll shoot the nukes. We’re not interested in figuring this out,’” a former Power 4 player personnel director said. “He (Sluka) tried to flex his leverage, and they were like, ‘OK, we’re good.’”
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A member of the coaching staff discussing financial numbers for a player is against NCAA rules, but according to numerous agents interviewed for this story, many of whom used anonymity to speak freely, it occurs frequently.
The puzzling element is why, allegedly, Cromartie would have taken the word of an offensive coordinator as a binding commitment.
“An assistant coach doesn’t have that kind of juice,” an NFL agent said. “Unless you’re hearing it from the head coach, the GM or the head of the collective — you have to go higher up the food chain. You just can’t do that.”
What’s clear is that many in the NIL space don’t know what to do.
“We’re all doing this on the fly,” the Power 4 chief of staff said. “There is not one program that has this figured out. We’re all figuring this out as we go.”
On July 1, 2021, NCAA schools allowed athletes to be compensated for their NIL for the first time after years of resistance and court battles. But under the new rules, schools themselves were not allowed to make financial offers to players.
Boosters quickly found a loophole in this new arrangement and formed collectives — essentially fundraising organizations outside the scope of the university and its athletic department. Acting as third-party brokers, collectives could induce recruits and transfers to sign with their program in return for use of their NIL for nominal obligations such as autograph signings or commercials.
Long a part of the college football underbelly, pay-for-play essentially became formalized, even though schools had to maintain their distance from explicit arrangements. Soon, players signed with schools after accepting six-figure NIL deals. In one famous case, five-star quarterback recruit Nico Iamaleava signed with Tennessee for $8 million.
Despite frustrations from some of its member schools, the NCAA’s weakened enforcement arm struggled to investigate and regulate in the NIL era. Then, with the NCAA in the midst of investigations into alleged pay-for-play violations at Tennessee, Miami and Florida last winter, a federal judge in Tennessee issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting the NCAA from enforcing its rules against boosters negotiating NIL deals.
“The NCAA’s authority to regulate activity in regards to NIL is extremely limited, if any,” said Tim Buckley, NCAA Senior Vice President of External Affairs. “The message has been pretty clear from the courts in the NIL space that student-athletes should have the ability to enter into these agreements.”
Head coaches and other staff members have become both fundraisers and salary-cap experts. Some programs have created new positions like chief of staff or general manager that deal primarily with NIL and the transfer portal.
Meanwhile, agents have swooped in to represent the players and get commissions off of their NIL deals. Some work for recognized agencies with NFL clients. Others, taking advantage of the NCAA’s minimal regulation, have no experience at all. In the case of quarterback Jaden Rashada, who infamously signed a $13.85 million contract with a Florida collective that terminated the deal a month later, an SMU student negotiated it.
“From our time in this business, without getting specific, false promises are pretty prevalent across the board,” said NFL agent Eugene Lee, who has 35 college clients. “Mostly, you see these situations if a player either doesn’t have representation or has unqualified representation.”
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Unlike in the NFL, which has a player’s union and collective bargaining, the NCAA cannot mandate things like a standardized contract or mandatory agent registry. It has tried, thus far unsuccessfully, to get Congress to enact legislation that would allow the NCAA to do so.
“We want to try to bring an end to this exploitative behavior we’ve seen in the NIL space,” Buckley said. “We would like the authority from Congress to do certain things like an agent registry, like allowing athletes to enter into standardized contracts.”
In the interim, the NCAA and its members are hoping that a proposed $2.8 billion settlement in the ongoing House v. NCAA antitrust suit in Northern California will help bring order to the climate. In a case involving former athletes seeking back pay for missed NIL opportunities, the parties have agreed to a new system in which the schools would for the first time pay athletes directly, using a share of the revenue generated by ticket sales, TV deals and sponsorships.
But Judge Claudia Wilken, who ruled against the organization previously in the O’Bannon and Alston cases, has expressed skepticism about a portion of the settlement that would attempt to limit collectives by having a new organization evaluate NIL deals to make sure if they’re of “fair market value.”
“Keep in mind,” Wilken said at a Sept. 5 hearing, “that taking things away from people doesn’t work well.”
At the crux of the UNLV-Sluka dispute is that whatever offer the school did or did not make, it was not in writing. According to the agents, collectives and staff members interviewed for the story, that’s not unusual. Collectives worried about running afoul of the NCAA’s pay-for-play ban aren’t comfortable with a player signing a contract before enrolling.
“We are all naked when you go into these deals,” one agent said. ”It’s (pulling) teeth to even see a contract.”
The agent said a school’s collective offered one of his clients $1.2 million to transfer there, and even then, he had to trust it would stick to its word. “Now, literally the day he enrolled, he had it deposited in his checking account,” that agent said.
That is not always the case. A former scouting director for several Power 4 schools said he knew of an ACC school that overshot its donor support when pursuing its transfer class and had to pull back its offers when the players arrived.
“The school said, ‘Literally, we can’t pay you that much, and the evidence is, ask everybody else, we’re asking all of you to take less,’” he said.
Meanwhile, some players who have already completed deals seek to renegotiate once they begin playing.
Last spring, media outlets reported that USC’s Bear Alexander, a transfer from Georgia prior to the 2023 season, intended to enter the portal again. Alexander, then considered the Trojans’ most talented defensive lineman, quickly took to social media to dispel the rumor, after receiving an “adjusted” NIL deal. He had become “a bit more expensive,” a program source confirmed to The Athletic.
On the day after Sluka’s announcement, Alexander also opted to shut it down and preserve his redshirt, although his guardian, Tony Jones, told media outlets it was due to Alexander’s reduced playing time in the Trojans’ first three games. But Jones told TMZ Sports: “We could potentially land back in the SEC. We’re still evaluating.”
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Sine said he’s concerned whether Sluka’s decision will start a trend nationally, one that could wreak havoc on the sport four weeks into next season if more players who aren’t happy with their NIL deals shut things down. He hopes revenue-sharing, if approved, will allow schools to finally tie compensation to participation.
“We could put a formal contract down (before enrolling), but if you transfer or leave early, there might be a buyout clause,” he said. “If you quit midway through, you’re going to owe a penalty.”
Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy told reporters he preemptively addressed the issue with his team during the preseason: “Tell your agent to quit calling us and asking for more money. It’s non-negotiable now. It’ll start again in December.’
NCAA members are still fighting vehemently against athletes being recognized as employees, which prevents them from forming a union or collectively bargaining. And even if the NCAA relented, it could not force the athletes to accept things like a standardized contract.
Five days after Sluka’s announcement, undefeated UNLV entered the AP Top 25 for the first time in program history following a 59-14 rout of Fresno State. Sluka’s replacement, Campbell transfer Hajj-Malik Williams, threw for three touchdowns and ran for a fourth.
Sluka is moving back home to Long Island, his father said. The former Holy Cross star plans to work with a private quarterback coach and prepare for his next move.
“He’s going to jump in the portal,” Bob Sluka said. “Matt’s going to end up at one heck of a school.”
— Antonio Morales, Joe Rexrode and Ralph Russo contributed reporting.
(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Photo: Kyle Rivas / Getty)
