Politics
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.
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 is the host of the nationally syndicated daily TV show “SportsWrap w/Jason Page.”
Politics
Trump wants the Postal Service to radically overhaul mail voting. But ballots are already going out.
President Donald Trump’s controversial demands for the Postal Service to overhaul and monitor millions of mail ballots hit another snag on Friday, when North Carolina became the first state in the nation to start sending out ballots for the November election.
In March, Trump signed the initial executive order, which aimed to crack down on mail-in voting — which he regularly alleges without evidence is a vector for widespread voter fraud — and assert an unprecedented amount of federal control over the upcoming elections.
Under this order and the subsequent rule drafted by the U.S. Postal Service, the USPS would refuse to deliver ballots to states that failed to provide lists of eligible mail voters or did not adhere to an approved envelope design style.
Since then, the order has faced legal challenges, and it remains paused by a federal judge’s orders. But the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow the new rule to proceed — something current and former election officials from both parties say would be both a legal nightmare that oversteps the federal government’s traditional role in elections and a logistical one that is happening far too close to the November election to implement even if they agreed with it.
“Why the hell are you rocking the boat this late in the game?” said Stephen Richer, a former Republican recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona, who has clashed with Trump allies for defending the security of the 2020 election.
Still, election officials are trying to project a sense of normalcy for voters, particularly in North Carolina, which serves as a test of whether established local election systems can operate normally amid intensifying federal scrutiny.
“I want to emphasize this point because there has been a lot of outside noise: Our county workers are ready,” Sam Hayes, a longtime Republican lawyer in the state and now executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said in a Thursday afternoon press conference.
He added, “All we can do is what we’re doing. … It is business as usual as far as I’m concerned.”
Despite the legal challenges, the Trump administration has continued to press the courts to let it proceed. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to lift an order from a Massachusetts judge which temporarily prevents the USPS from enforcing their rule. It is the second time the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to step in, after winning an earlier victory in which the high court dismissed an earlier hold on the rule as premature.
“The uncertainty is coming from a single activist judge who continues to try and obstruct President Trump from implementing commonsense measures to protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans vote in American elections,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement. “These safeguards for mail ballots were proposed months ago giving election officials ample time to prepare for the 2026 election.”
The USPS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Election officials said that if the rule goes into effect this close to November, it would cause chaos and place added strain on the USPS and election officials. And an anonymous federal whistleblower said in a report circulated earlier this week by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) that the USPS was moving forward in a “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed process” to try to implement the new system ahead of the midterms.
In the coming weeks, states across the country will follow North Carolina’s lead. Nine other states will begin mailing ballots in the next two weeks, according to a tracker from the National Conference of State Legislatures — with the biggest day for mailing coming 45 days before the election in mid-September.
“It would be so outrageous to try to let this go into effect. It’s hard to even imagine,” said Ben Hovland, a senior fellow for democracy at the progressive think tank Center for American Progress and former Democratic commissioner with the Election Assistance Commission who was fired by Trump in July.
He added, “It would be a break-glass moment for our democracy.”
The rule would require meticulous changes to ballot handling and tracking practices that Hovland said are impossible to implement before Election Day in about two months, effectively disenfranchising millions of voters.
“Ballots are printed. Envelopes are printed. You can go on and on with all the practical reasons that show that implementing something like this at this time is not feasible,” he said.
Richer said he doubted the new rules would bring about more security. Even if the USPS received lists from the states, according to the postal service’s final rule, it would not do any additional vetting of the list, Richer said.
“It’s just that the mail ballots have to be on that list, and I don’t see what added value for election integrity that does,” he said.
He added, “It creates a lot of administrative burden, and I think it creates a lot more opportunity for error.”
While a decision looms in the courts, election officials and experts cast doubt on the likelihood of the rules going into effect before November. A more pressing issue, they said, is the confusion and uncertainty surrounding mail-in ballots, which could subvert and change the behaviors of voters.
“It makes things seem messy or difficult, and it can dissuade people from participating or coming out to vote,” Hovland said. “It certainly also helps establish a pretext to make bad faith claims about election results.”
Hovland said that while none of these claims of voter fraud are backed up with facts, they could cause Americans to lose faith in the voting process.
Still, some current officials contended they were well-prepared for whatever happens — and that they’d be able to communicate effectively with voters who have become increasingly buffeted by dramatic rhetoric about the once-unmentioned nuts and bolts of actually running an election.
“There’s always a lot of noise around elections, that’s not going to change, and it can be hard to differentiate that from what’s actually going on on the ground,” said Jason Tyson, director of external affairs for the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
As Election Day approaches, Tyson and election officials said they urge voters to check their registration status and make a plan to vote.
He added, “I think we’ve got a really well-trained, solid staff who are ready, and who have gone through all of the checks and balances and points of contact that we need to do to get to where we are.”
Missouri’s Supreme Court suspended a congressional map that state Republicans drew last year that would have netted the GOP an additional House seat, likely keeping the seat in Democratic hands this November.
The court ruled unanimously on Thursday that a referendum petition organized by Democrats to put the new congressional maps to a vote was incorrectly deemed insufficient by Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, and ordered that the gerrymandered map be put to a vote in the fall.
Voters will ultimately decide the fate of the new lines in November. But in the meantime, it cannot be in place for the midterms, meaning Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s original Kansas City-based district will likely stay in Democrats’ hands this fall.
Construction crews could begin the excavation process for what will be President Donald Trump’s massive 250-foot-tall arch in as soon as the next two weeks, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced on Thursday.
The monument — which will be erected in a traffic circle at the head of the Memorial Bridge over the Potomac River, coming between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington Cemetery — has generated controversy as concerns emerged about the design and traffic congestion during construction.
The arch would take two to three years to construct on the proposed schedule, according to documents released in June.
“We are pleased to announce that after a very long wait (over 125 years!), we are preparing to start, over the next two-week period, the excavation work necessary for the Great Triumphal Arch and Military Observation Deck,” Burgum said in a social media post.
The 250-foot-tall arch will be among Trump’s most visible projects, as the administration continues its attempts to remake Washington. Critics, however, have voiced fears that the structure may be too large, and overshadow other monuments, like the Lincoln Memorial on the other side of the Potomac River.
The proposed arch will dwarf the Arc de Triomphe in Paris in size. It is unclear at this time how much construction will cost; the National Endowment for the Humanities earmarked $15 million for the monument.
“This will be one the the Great Pieces of American Architecture, honoring the history and significance of Arlington National Cemetery and befitting the most powerful Capital in the World,” Burgum said.
The monument will be constructed on land overseen by the National Park Service, and critics have argued Trump’s latest project requires explicit congressional approval. However, the Interior secretary continues to rebut these claims.
Instead, Burgum echoed previous statements and said historically “Congress and various congressionally chartered commissions decreed that a monumental work should adorn Columbia Island,” the traffic circle where the monument is planned to be constructed.
“Despite Congress’s intent, the site became and remains today a barren traffic circle lacking any monumental treatment and significant historic value,” he said.
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