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00:00What a wild day it was yesterday in college football, exposing all the pitfalls of this
00:09new era where name, image, and likeness in the transfer portal are all here.
00:15Listen, I am all for player agency, but we need to put systems in place to make it not
00:22the Wild West, to make it not even resemble free agency in professional sports leagues.
00:28Because Donnie, those operate with contracts and legal agreements that have consequences
00:35to violating or unfulfilling the terms of those sheets.
00:41Now I wasn't here yesterday, right?
00:43I had the day off.
00:44But when I woke up and saw the news about Matthew Sluka, UNLV's quarterback, transferring
00:49after only three games as the Red and Rebs were in prime position to contend for a conference
00:55crown in the Mountain West to maybe earn one of the automatic bids to a college football
01:01playoff, one of those G5 spots, if they are available, I was stunned.
01:06And then we learned more and more information as the day went through.
01:11Listen, my overall take is this, DRS.
01:14This is not UNLV's fault.
01:16This is not the UNLV collective's fault.
01:18It's a little bit on the agent that represents Matthew Sluka.
01:22At the end of the day, it is the ecosystem of which we operate, and that is the issue.
01:28Zero.
01:29Zero.
01:30Restrictions were put into place or guidelines for how this should operate.
01:35There are no standardized contracts.
01:37There is no transparency and honesty when it comes to meeting the terms of these agreements
01:43that poof, vanish into thin air when it is convenient.
01:47There are fingers to be pointed, Donnie, but nobody is ever going to admit fault or
01:53take blame.
01:54Go ahead.
01:55No.
01:56And here's what we're looking at, too, because I understand where you can get on both sides
02:00and make a pretty good argument at this point, but it really comes down to this.
02:03You're a quarterback that's looking for an institution.
02:05You had a pretty good run at Holy Cross.
02:07A Division One team comes calling, and maybe there's two or three teams that would like
02:10to have you.
02:11Are you telling me that you had a meeting probably at like a Whataburger and you just
02:16sat on the side and said, you know what?
02:18I probably can get you a hundred grand.
02:19Oh, great.
02:20Signed, sealed, delivered.
02:21I'll be there.
02:22Pay me my hundred grand with nothing written in stone and you have representation.
02:25You know what?
02:26This sounds like Matthew Sluka should have done today.
02:27Should have filed a lawsuit against his agent for lying to him and say, no, I'm going to
02:31play with this institution with my guys.
02:33I'll get that hundred grand later here.
02:35But you know what?
02:36Also, you can buy into it because I love to go down the rabbit hole.
02:38Who's to say his own his, you know, representation didn't come to him and say, look, that important
02:43game is coming up.
02:44We can preserve this here.
02:45We've shown that you can play football at the division one level.
02:48If you sit this out, I guarantee you in the offseason, I can get you more money.
02:53And you can make up a story saying, oh, just hearsay.
02:55This assistant coach on a phone call said, I'm going to get a hundred grand when you
02:58want to be.
02:59Basically, I was like, no, we gave him three thousand dollars to move.
03:02And when we heard this, we figured we probably could get him like three grand a month, which
03:05would turn out to be like fifteen thousand dollars for the season.
03:08That's big time from fifteen thousand to one hundred thousand dollars.
03:11But also, of course, it's time for the institutions to sort of enact guardrails as well.
03:15Ben, correct me if I'm wrong.
03:17You sign up for an athletic scholarship, which is year to year renewable.
03:21So, OK, you do that with the school and your Matthews Luca, the school has the right to
03:25release you or they could just burn that scholarship and say, just like in the NFL, you don't want
03:29to play for me.
03:30OK, you're not playing for anybody else unless we let you out of this.
03:34So guardrails start that to get put in.
03:36But this is such a bad sign.
03:37And we can go down a long list of what could happen in the future.
03:41But let's put it this way.
03:42You worked hard with these players.
03:44You are three.
03:45You know, the biggest games of your season are coming up now and you dipped out on your
03:49team.
03:50I don't care if it was about money or not.
03:51That's your representation's problem.
03:53I can only put myself in the same shoes and say these are my guys.
03:56I'm leaving them high and dry because I'm going to pull back because I had a promise
04:00that wasn't signed.
04:01That's my fault here.
04:02I should own up and ride this thing out.
04:04But hey, maybe he ends up at Boise State next year.
04:07And I hope if he does, Boise State goes, we'll get you 200 grand, then stiffs him again.
04:11How about that?