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Who to actually blame for the UNLV/Matt Sluka NIL mess
Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.
Just like we all expected, the center of the college football universe is unquestionably the UNLV Rebels.
Part of that, of course, is that UNLV is good. They’re 3-0, ranked in the Coaches Poll for the first time
ever, have road wins over Houston and Kansas, and have a huge game this weekend against Fresno State. They’re also the cornerstone of the Mountain West Conference, and
leveraged the interest of the Pac-12 and others into a larger share of the MWC financial pie.
But the story that seems to have really captured the attention of the college football world isn’t any of that. Earlier this week,
Matt Sluka, UNLV’s quarterback, announced he’s redshirting this year and hitting the transfer portal…because he believes UNLV did not follow through with promises surrounding NIL compensation. Specifically, he and his representation believe they had a $100,000 deal for Sluka to transfer to UNLV. The school and their major collective disagree.
After reading everything I could and making calls for the last two hours… I’m less convinced this is the start of a new floodgate of athlete opt-outs, and more a case of several folks making big mistakes. There’s a lot of blame to go around here.
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I don’t think Matt Sluka’s agent covered himself in glory
If there is no other takeaway from this entire story, I hope it is this.
Verbal offer are not contracts. Contracts are contracts. Don’t do work without getting stuff on paper. I’ve been burned by this principle a few times earlier in my career (both as a journalist and as other stuff), as have countless other folks I know….but we didn’t have the benefit of having an agent. The idea that a professional agent would allow his client to move across the country, enroll in a school and start the season
without anything in writing…
based only on a verbal agreement from a coach… is craziness. At the very least, that would be terrible, terrible advice.
But that doesn’t appear to be the only mistake made here. For one, Marcus Cromartie, Sluka’s agent,
wasn’t actually certified in Nevada. This isn’t that uncommon, as agent certification laws are rarely enforced, but anybody working for an
actual agency should know better, especially given who he was working with. Blueprint Sports, the company that operates UNLV’s main NIL collective, was co-founded by a fella named Francisco Aguilar, who now happens to be Nevada’s Secretary of State. You think looking into paperwork might just be a teensy bit more in the DNA of that kind of company, right?
It also appears that Cromartie was unaware of legal changes
that would permit athletes to sign NIL paperwork before they actually enroll in college. The regulatory world of NIL changes every week, and I can understand why a much smaller or less experienced agency might decide to err on the side of over-compliance
But Cromartie works for
Equity Sports, which isn’t a small agency. They work with athletes like Kareem Hunt, Jerry Jeudy, James Harden, and some dude named
Patrick Mahomes, along with several college athletes who have legitimate NFL prospects.
Typically, larger agencies focus on clients who are either likely to sign much larger collective deals (think closer to seven figures than six), clients who have marketability beyond bagman-NIL, and clients who they’ll be likely to continue to work with as professionals.
No disrespect to Matt Sluka…but he’s not an NFL prospect or the kind of guy that’s going to appear in the next Dr. Pepper commercial. If everything worked out perfectly for this deal, Cromartie is making what, somewhere between $5-$20K off Sluka’s $100K contract…and that might be the only NIL money Sluka makes the rest of his college career.
Which makes me wonder…why is Equity Sports involved in this kind of deal at all? To me, it seems like this entire episode creates meaningful reputational harm for the agency as they chase bigger names…over limited upside
