Casino Owner Offered $100,000 To College Football QuarterbackUNLV Disagreement Highlights New NIL Era In College Football |
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The University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) football team is off to a 4-0 start and leads the Mountain West, but made news recently when starting quarterback Matthew Sluka abruptly left the team after claiming a promised $100,000 NIL (name, image, and likeness) payment was never made. A casino owner then stepped in, offering to make the payment himself.
Late last week, casino mogul Derek Stevens, the owner of downtown Las Vegas casinos including Circa, announced that he was willing to pay the $100,000 to keep Sluka on the field for the hometown team. Circa Sports Vice President of Operations Mike Palm told Action Network that he reached out to the team to see if there was an opportunity to make the payment.
“Mr. Stevens was willing to help the university get there,” Palm told the network. “One hundred thousand dollars is a small price to keep UNLV’s College Football Playoff hopes alive.”
Differing Views On Situation
Those inquiries were rebuffed, however, and Palm said someone with the program said Sluka was no longer part of the team and that “we won’t be doing business with the Sluka family again.”
The casino and school are reportedly now working together toward future partnerships, which raises questions about how much influence a gambling entity should have over collegiate sports.
UNLV and Sluka released differing accounts about what the quarterback was promised in regards to a payment. Since the NCAA began allowing players to be paid NIL deals, six- and seven-figure payments have become commonplace. For example, University of Texas quarterback Arch Manning, son of Cooper Manning and nephew of Eli and Peyton Manning, reportedly has agreements in place totaling more than $3 million.
The UNLV case offered a unique situation in the NIL era with a player in a public spat with a university over perceived payments that weren’t made. The team has tried to move on and notched a 59-14 win over Fresno State the week after Sluka left the team to move to 25th in the rankings. However, a 44-41 overtime loss on Friday night to Syracuse exposed the severity of Sluka’s departure.
“We’ve done our due diligence and we move on,” UNLV athletic director Erick Harper told ESPN. “I wish Sluka the best.”
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