On the one hand, you can’t really blame this Matthew Sluka kid who is leaving UNLV after three games over money that he says was promised to him, and not delivered.
But then the other side of this story getting out the way it did is: a coach would be a damned fool to waste a scholarship and roster spot on this kid next year.
If you’re like me, and hadn’t heard of Matthew Sluka until today, here’s what we need to know:
Sluka was a three-year starter at Holy Cross, at the FCS level, who put up solid numbers there while leading that program to FCS playoff berths in 2021 and 2022.
With one year of eligibility remaining, and his coach, Bob Chesney, leaving Holy Cross at the end of the 2023 season to take over at JMU, Sluka hit the transfer portal, and landed at UNLV, reportedly, we’re hearing now, for a promise of $100,000 in NIL money.
Word is now, from Sluka’s agent and his father, that UNLV only came up with $3,000 of the money the Sluka side said it was promised, which was what prompted the kid, on the eve of the fourth game of the 2024 season, at which point Sluka would have to decide whether to redshirt or finish out the season, to bail on his team.
The kicker here: UNLV is off to a 3-0 start, with wins over two Big 12 programs, Houston and Kansas, which propelled the Runnin’ Rebels to their first-ever Top 25 ranking.
You have to imagine that things had to get pretty bad for Sluka to literally take his ball and go home, considering.
The kid would seem to have every bit of leverage here, with the team rolling, in the Top 25, the rest.
For this to escalate to the point that the QB just quits tells you that whoever it was that promised Sluka the $100,000 – the Sluka side, for the record, says it was Brennan Marion, the offensive coordinator at UNLV – either knew that the program didn’t have $100,000 to dole out in the first place, and offered it anyway, or just didn’t know, and now he has egg on his face from this, too.
Marion, the OC, comes out of this looking tarnished, and so does the head coach, Barry Odom, who, according to the QB’s father, Bob Sluka, tried to weasel out of the situation by saying the offer wasn’t valid because it didn’t come from him.
If you feel like you need a shower to wash off the stink of all of this, don’t feel bad.
But we’re not done, because there’s one other casualty in this story, and it’s Matthew Sluka himself.
I’m going to say here that I buy the story that he’s selling, that he was promised $100K, and the UNLV program screwed him over.
Even so, it’s hard for me to imagine that there’s going to be another FBS coach out there who does have $100,000 or thereabouts to commit in NIL money on an FCS quarterback who is going to say, I’m going to invest that on the guy who walked out on his program three games into the season.
I feel like I need a shower and a stiff drink at this point.
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Chris Graham
