Since about the time Rutgers met Princeton in the first-ever college football game in 1869, coaches have been making promises they could not - or never intended to - keep.
Especially over the last decade or so, college football recruits have taken on this sort of celebrity status when they visit campuses - or when coaches leave their families around the holidays for in-home visits to beg players to sign with their schools.
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Photo shoots have gone to the extreme. One prominent coach has acted like an Uber driver for recruits when they visit campus. The steak dinners, the extravagant hotel rooms dolled up with all kinds of cookies and candies and God knows what else. And that’s just for visits.
Let alone all the promises of early playing time that rarely materialize. Or the promise that a certain player can play both offense and defense, which is nearly impossible or even the best thing for the player.
The coaches aren’t necessarily to blame, either. The kids lap this stuff up, revel in their newfound status and almost demand it on every visit they take. You know how many Instagram followers they can get off this stuff?
Players are so lavished during the recruiting process that a new term was formed years ago to kick all that nonsense out of their system once they get to campus: De-recruited.
That’s when reality sets in and it’s time to put up or shut up and some players can handle it and some don’t.
But now we’ve entered a new NIL era where the promises are not just hollow ones. There is actually a significant financial backing to it, promises made about dollars and cents, and those go a whole lot further than some cookie cake on a hotel mattress.
With that come dirtball deals, more lies and maybe even outright confusion. Now we have this UNLV situation.
According to reports, UNLV starting quarterback Matthew Sluka, who transferred there from Holy Cross, believed he was promised a $100,000 NIL deal to come play for the Rebels.
The UNLV NIL operation - Blueprint Sports - pushed back against Sluka’s claims and said that there were no “formal” NIL offers made during Sluka’s recruitment. I take that as someone at UNLV promised Sluka something but not in written form by the collective and so there was nothing official. Who knows exactly what went down or was said.
UNLV also released a statement saying the demands from Sluka and his family were “a violation of NCAA pay-for-play rules.”
A veteran head coach told ESPN’s Pete Thamel that this situation is Jaden Rashada 2.0. And he’s partially right. The NCAA has established no serious guidelines, rules or standards of any significance in this space as it runs wild. Rashada was a recruit just coming to Florida, hardly the immediate savior. He wasn’t going to play from Day 1, NIL deal or no NIL deal.
Sluka was the starting quarterback of the undefeated UNLV team heading into the Fresno State game. Hours after Sluka announced he would be leaving the team, so did running back Michael Allen, although his on-field contributions have been less significant and he said NIL didn’t play a role in his decision.
Part of me holds a grudge against Sluka for leaving his team in the lurch in the middle of an important season. It’s not fair to them. But part of me salutes Sluka for not putting up with the BS of the NIL era where he seems to feel someone promised him a significant payday either knowingly lying or holding back money on legal technicalities.
It all stinks to high heaven. If UNLV coach Barry Odom was promised a certain amount per check and it never came, should he be expected to coach each week with no money? Would you go to work if you were guaranteed a paycheck but your boss gave you the run-around?
It’s even worse with football players because they’re putting their physical well-being on the line each and every week.
So now he have Sluka-gate, Rashada-gate, Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin coming out saying Auburn coach Hugh Freeze will try to steal all The Grove NIL collective staff just like he did all of Ole Miss’ coaches and so many more stories. A coach this week told me it might be tough keeping a committed kid in the class because others are throwing around NIL and the kid’s family is all about it..
Sluka’s agent told Yahoo Sports that a UNLV assistant coach promised Sluka the six-figure payment to leave Holy Cross and come to Vegas, not a collective.
This would hardly be the first time a coach exaggerated or outright lied to a recruit. But now we’re in the NIL era and players have power.
Am I crazy Sluka to think ditched out on his team in the middle of Fresno State preparations? No. But I cannot fault him. If everyone is getting their promised money and he’s sitting with a measly $3,000, I totally understand his point, too. Like coaches love to say, Sluka is standing on business - the Matthew Sluka business.
This is not the first NIL controversy and it won’t be the last.
What I wonder most is what other quarterback is sitting out there right now reading the Sluka headlines and pondering if they should do the same thing because they were promised something they never received, either.
It would hardly be the first time that happened.
