Politics

This undefeated QB’s mid-season decision was a surprise. His reason was a warning.

Published

2 years ago

November 12, 2024

This undefeated QB’s mid-season decision was a surprise. His reason was a warning.

In 2021, the Supreme Court ruled that the NCAA could not prohibit student-athletes from profiting from education-related payments. Better known as the name, image, and likeness (NIL) ruling, the high court said that student-athletes could get paid for use of their name, image and likeness without endangering their “amateur” status. What has followed in the wake of that decision can only be described as utter chaos.

Two major NIL-related college football stories over the past few days are case in point.

The high court said that student-athletes could get paid for use of their name, image and likeness without endangering their “amateur” status.

On Tuesday night, UNLV starting quarterback Matthew Sluka announced he was leaving the Rebels’ 3-0 football program. Sluka had transferred to the school from Holy Cross after last season. His agent told ESPN that Sluka’s decision was motivated, at least in part, by a verbal offer of $100,000 promised by an assistant coach. Sluka’s father claims UNLV head coach Barry Odom claimed the verbal offer wasn’t valid since it didn’t come from him.

UNLV has a different perspective. The university said in a statement that the student-athlete’s “representative made financial demands upon the University and its NIL collective in order to continue playing.” The school claimed that while it has “honored all previously agreed-upon scholarships for Matthew Sluka,” the demands made by Sluka’s team were interpreted “as a violation of the NCAA pay-for-play rules, as well as Nevada state law.”

There’s more: UNLV has a fan- and alumni-driven collective that helps to pay players for their name, image and likeness. The Friends of UNLV collective says it has no record of Sluka being owed any money outside of a $3,000 payment made to him over the summer for an engagement he took part in.

UNLV quarterback Matthew Sluka #3 runs with the ball during the college football game against Utah Tech at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas on Sept. 7, 2024. Daniel Jacobi II / Las Vegas Review-Journal/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

Sluka’s departure so early in the season means he maintains another year of eligibility if he transfers to another program. But it also means he’s abandoned his teammates after one of the best starts in school history, with wins over Big 12 foes Houston and Kansas.

Either way, this “new normal” for college athletics feels increasingly like the Wild West. As loudmouth conservative sports-and-news commentator Clay Travis accurately pointed out, not even pro sports has “perpetual free agency” that allows you to walk out on a team four games into a season and join another.

In another corner of the internet, controversial Barstool Sports founder and CEO Dave Portnoy took to social media on Thursday to offer up to $3 million dollars yearly to top (and eligible) quarterbacks who commit to his alma mater, Michigan. Four years ago, if a coach bought too many cheeseburgers for a starving player on his roster, the NCAA could sanction him. Now, you have sports media company owners offering suitcases of cash to student-athletes.

All a college player has to do these days is endorse a product or appear in a car ad somewhere, and a “friend of the program” can pay him whatever they want. Portnoy suggested he’d pay the players via a “$3 million marketing agreement.” “I think that’s legal,” he told listeners. And he’s probably right. The NCAA has disclosure agreements put in place, but the organization isn’t doing nearly enough to keep teams from essentially putting together the best squads that money can buy.

Now the NCAA is proposing a $17 million to $22 million salary capsimilar to the way pro sports teams operate. This salary cap would cover all athletic programs under each school’s umbrella, not just football. Many big questions remain unanswered. How would this money be distributed at schools with multiple high-profile sports programs? For instance, a school with a powerhouse women’s volleyball program could also have a top 20 football team. How do you decide how much money goes where? And would this create absurd and unfortunate rivalries between athletes at the same school? This sure seems like where collegiate athletics is heading.

For years, advocates screamed bloody murder about how schools were taking advantage of student-athletes by raking in tens of millions of dollars off their achievements. Now, many of those same advocates seem content to watch the entire collegiate sports system start to implode, while the system tries to play catch-up amidst a new and very complicated world order.

Jason Page

Jason Page is the host of the nationally syndicated daily TV show “SportsWrap w/Jason Page.”

Politics

World Cup fuels ticketing reform demands

Published

9 hours ago

June 21, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Demands are growing for a political reckoning over ticket scams at the World Cup — and beyond.

The National Independent Venue Association and Fan Alliance, organizations representing and advocating for entertainment venues and artists respectively, sent a joint letter to Congress on Thursday, calling on lawmakers to ban speculative and ghost tickets, cases where resellers flog tickets they don’t actually have.

The letter — addressed to Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer — includes nearly two dozen accounts of fans who say they were scammed out of thousands of dollars trying to get tickets to the World Cup, which began last week. The groups are also asking fans to share their own stories with elected officials via the Fix the Tix Fan Action Center that launched last week.

“Every one of these stories erodes the public’s faith that consumers should and will be protected from fraud,” NIVA Executive Director Stephen Parker and Fan Alliance founder Donald Cohen wrote. “We urge Congress to work with us to prevent fraud like this in the future and finally enact ticket resale consumer protections that will protect Americans and ensure affordability.”

The letter flagged fans like Dacy Gillespie, who bought World Cup tickets for her sons on Christmas, only to learn on match day — months later — that the seller couldn’t deliver them. And Skylie Shore, who Parker and Cohen said spent well over $6,000 on tickets to the Scotland-Haiti match on June 13, but was forced to wait outside the stadium because she couldn’t access them as fans marched in on gameday.

“These examples reveal a consistent pattern: consumer deception, speculative ticket sales, and broken-hearted American families at the hands of resale ticketing companies like StubHub,” Parker and Cohen wrote.

In a statement, StubHub spokesperson Jack Sterne said that the platform does not allow speculative ticket sales, and blamed FIFA for users’ difficulty in accessing their tickets.

“We understand that attending the World Cup represents a significant investment in time and money, and we take our responsibility to every fan who books through our platform seriously,” Sterne said in a statement. “Many of the issues fans are facing trace back to the event organizer’s technology infrastructure, newly announced transfer restrictions, and a new app that was launched just a month ago.”

In response, FIFA said in a statement that the organization “can guarantee the validity and delivery of tickets purchased through its official platforms” and that FIFA.com/tickets “is the official ticket sales channel” for the tournament.

NIVA and Fan Alliance are urging congressional leadership to place universal price-gouging limits on ticket resale, enact stringent fines on perpetrators and a violation-reporting mechanism for ticket scams, and require secondary ticketing platforms to produce data on ticket fulfillment and consumer complaints.

The groups are not the only ones monitoring for evidence of shady ticket practices. Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway issued a consumer guidance in advance of the tournament, urging match-goers to beware of fraud and promising to hold offenders accountable. And the FBI in May put out a public service announcement, warning fans against purchasing tickets on copycat websites modeled on FIFA’s.

“With the World Cup coming to Kansas City, excitement is high and, unfortunately, so is the potential for fraud,” Hanaway said in her statement. “Missourians should be able to enjoy this once-in-a-generation event without fear of being deceived. My office will hold accountable anyone who seeks to exploit our families, and we stand ready to assist anyone who encounters suspicious activity.”