UNLV’s little-known quarterback Matt Sulka became the most famous player in college football on Wednesday for one of two reasons.
The first version of this story, his version, is that a UNLV assistant coach verbally promised him $100,000 in name, image and likeness payments after transferring from Holy Cross and he arrived on campus. Sometimes that money never materialized.
The second version – the story spun by people friendly to UNLV – is that Sulka asked for a raise, so to speak, after becoming the starting quarterback for a 3-0 team that is in a good position in the College Football Playoff. It is said that it was done. .
In the “wild west” of the NIL, both scenarios are plausible because they have happened dozens of times before at schools across the college sports world. What’s different now is that we learned this through a statement that Sulka will be leaving the team and redshirting for the remainder of the year.
This unusual situation has been like rocket fuel for the debate over NIL over the past three years. The lack of oversight around NIL in general, the malicious scammers and incompetent operatives looking to make a quick buck, the basic economic rights of college athletes, the delicate dynamics in the locker room over money, it’s all here. He has become a notable character. Depending on how you look at how college athletes are compensated, you can choose your own narrative on this matter, given the lack of clear evidence of how things went wrong. Dew.
But this should be a wake-up call to everyone who is contorting themselves into pretzels trying to avoid the college athlete employment model. Until schools, like other multi-billion dollar sports leagues, take on the responsibility of being employers, the challenges of building and maintaining rosters will continue, creating chaos and consequences, and making the entire operation ineffective at best. It looks serious and will become a breeding ground for scandals. At worst, a malicious actor.
All of these hiccups are growing pains as the world of college sports moves from an era when picking up the tab on a college athlete’s pizza was taboo to one where assistant coaches flaunted their T-shirts during practice. Some may argue that it is only part of the Players who are paying. Just good old American capitalism at work, baby.
But right now, there is no industry in this country where capitalism operates as freely as college sports and NIL, and where no legally enforceable regulations have been found. And what is the result?
This is primarily great for the players, who have the chance to get a better deal and a new team on the open market every year if they wish. It’s disastrous for coaches and administrators. Their roster has to start from near zero every year, and every decision is operating on misinformation about a player’s actual value on the open market. And it proves to be a never-ending treadmill for the Collective, a semi-independent booster organization that can never stop fundraising lest it run out of money to cover the next batch of recruitments and transfers. has been.
Didn’t the UNLV bunch have enough money to clear this up? Did the school want to draw the line on the consequences of trying to ask for $100,000 in the middle of the season? We may never actually know.
UNLV’s official statement said Sulka made “financial demands…to continue playing,” which the school interpreted as a violation of NCAA rules.
“UNLV does not engage in such activities and will not respond to implied threats,” the statement said.
UNLV’s organization issued a statement denying that it had ever offered him $100,000 and insisting that he has kept all of his contract and financial commitments for this season.
But no matter who you believe, the consequences are real for UNLV, whose football team and remaining players were left behind by their teammates, and for head coach Barry Odom, who must clean up his reputation in his place. It will be. of his staff.
There’s no reasonable way to determine how often this kind of thing happens behind the scenes, but the coaching community, especially in football and men’s basketball, is plagued with misunderstandings about what’s being delivered, everything from collective hangings. , an endless supply of anecdotes from the past three years. Getting nailed down for a paycheck, agents threatening to pull players out of good situations over money issues.
It is true that university sports are popular. No matter how chaotic the sport may seem, seats are full, TV ratings are rising, and interest continues to explode.
But a business with such high stakes and money shouldn’t be run haphazardly, with little oversight of financial transactions that essentially serve as payroll.
However, there is one major hurdle to controlling the NIL environment. Attempts by schools and the NCAA to limit how organizations operate face legal opposition and antitrust scrutiny.
Even the House of Representatives v. NCAA settlement, which for the first time opens a path for schools to share revenue directly with athletes, is on hold due to Northern District of California Judge Claudia Wilken’s concerns over some restrictions on NIL/collective activities.
The only answer is to make college athletes employees, as they do in other professional sports, and to standardize the rules of the road and agree to them through a collective bargaining process.
University presidents and NCAA officials have spent tens of millions of dollars in litigation and lobbying in Washington, D.C., over the past few years to avoid such an outcome. They seem willing to make every concession to avoid having athletes become employees.
However, as long as the NIL Collective exists in its current form, with virtually no rules, standards, oversight or transparency in its dealings with players, the UNLV-Sulka dispute will no doubt lead to a number of public outbursts within the country. It would be the first of many conflicts. middle of the season.
If schools are happy with the trend, they should by all means continue on their current path. If they want to take back control and bring order to athletes’ compensation, making them employees is really the only solution.