UNLV QB is leaving the program immediately due to the school not withholding NIL commitments
- Thread starter CYaeger
- Start date
Everyone commenting here, did no one read the Pete Thamel tweets posted above? The kid never got paid.
I mean, it’s just his camp saying he never got paid. UNLV said he got what was promised. It’s a bunch of he said/she said right now.
And this is why I'm a bit skeptical of the player's representative's story. I'm skeptical any school is dumb enough to just flat out promise something then refuse to pay, unless they're good with screwing their ability to recruit for years. But it certainly is plausible that they promised something verbally and then lied about it.
And seriously, he has an NIL representative (Cromartie) and got nothing in writing? That's the biggest scandal out of all this. They had paid NIL representation and nothing in writing apparently. What a massive, stupid racket this all is.
Yes - there are definitely two viewpoints. One could look at it from the player perspective and say he is doing what is best for him. Or one can look at it from a team perspective and say the player is being selfish
Either way, the NIL has created a new avenue where a player may decide to quit mid season. People can debate if this is good or bad for the sport, and there will never be a consensus. But as long as money exists, greed will always exist.
It doesn't take a lot of intellectual fire power from all parties involved to understand that not delivering on NIL agreements would have a serious long term effect on a program's ability to make deals in the future.
I don't necessarily buy into ANY of the posturing in the media by those involved right now.
I don't necessarily buy into ANY of the posturing in the media by those involved right now.
Maybe.
I seem to recall Russell Wilson getting benched last year so he wouldn't meet requirements for performance incentives/extensions in his contract.
I put nothing beyond anybody in the NFL or player wise.
Northwestern players tried to unionize a few years ago, and what I would consider to be a vast majority of fans thought it was terrible. Only through collective bargaining can contracts/rules be established. Right now there are basically no rules, because they didn't do anything, and the SCOTUS came through and said the previous rules were unconstitutional. So we truly are in the wild west.
And again, while I appreciate everything our admins and coaches do for the programs, a world where Pollard gets a million a year and the players get 2k I think is absolutely absurd. Yes, a scholarship and everything else they get has value I'm not denying it. But that also isn't really income. You could offer me a job right now with a 250k/year benefits package but zero salary and while that sounds great I couldn't do it.
We already saw this exact thing play out with Jaden Rashada at Florida, and he sued them.
I don't trust a LOT of these collectives to negotiate in good faith. And, perhaps even more so, I'm sure many of these collectives are being promised large sums from their donors if they go get X player and the donor doesn't come through or the money is allocated elsewhere.
That's what I am saying. They don't have that, thus this kid is bailing. But they need to have it for competitive balance. Just like every other pro sports league in the world.
College sports has been underpaying FB and MBB players for decades. That has to change. But it needs to be on the up and up.
The Pirates recently DFA’d Rowdy Telez who was 4 at bats away from a $200,000 bonus. Even where guardrails (Player’s Union) are in place, greed is rampant. It’s brutal
Another problem with all this is the avalanche of hypocrisy about NIL not being pay-to-play. That is exactly what 99% of it is. And it makes it harder to find a solution in good faith, and it also makes it easy for people to conflate (including me).
What if some whale bet $1M on the under for UNLV win total for this year? And saw this kid being successful and thought "I can give him $100k to quit and that's a good investment".
Now it's REALLY getting greasy...
Big difference I believe. I think the Rashada deal with the Gator Collective was contractual. Because the financial backing didn't come in, or so they claim, the collective terminated (or is trying to terminate) a contract.
Seems like a lot more legal standing for Rashada. Also seems like a huge red flag that should waving like crazy against agreeing to deals with that collective.
Honestly nothing would surprise me here. I agree this all seems really dumb, and we're unlikely to find out exactly what happened because every party involved will want this story to go away as quickly as possible.
This whole thing is still very much in it's infancy too. Yeah, they probably didn't sign a contract, Blum has talked in the past about how there are a lot of limitations on what can actually be in these contracts. There can't be performance incentives, they can't require they play for the school, etc.
He mentioned in the past that there can be requirements that they have their primary residence in the town, and stuff like that, but it sounds like there is a ton of gray area and there haven't been many legal challenges yet.
Not an insider, but here’s my guess on how this went down:
- Sluka performs well with wins against 2 P5 programs
- Kid realizes he’s not being paid per verbal agreement
- He either hires or engages with current agent for guidance on next steps
- Agent, doing what they do, tests his value in the market. Never been higher.
- Maybe there’s assurances from different school/collective
- Agent advises kid to approach UNLV about gap in agreed upon compensation plus increased market value
- UNLV balks, so kid plays the card he has and leaves
Again, the scenario above is just my speculation. One would think tampering is on the table, so whatever school/collective offered him better be sure that 43% completion % is worth it.
- Sluka performs well with wins against 2 P5 programs
- Kid realizes he’s not being paid per verbal agreement
- He either hires or engages with current agent for guidance on next steps
- Agent, doing what they do, tests his value in the market. Never been higher.
- Maybe there’s assurances from different school/collective
- Agent advises kid to approach UNLV about gap in agreed upon compensation plus increased market value
- UNLV balks, so kid plays the card he has and leaves
Again, the scenario above is just my speculation. One would think tampering is on the table, so whatever school/collective offered him better be sure that 43% completion % is worth it.
This is where the NCAA really blew it. They could have worked out an arrangement on that, players would have got WAY less than what they are going to end up with, and they could have controlled it all and maintained the NCAA's leadership.
Alas they went for the "principled stand" maximalist position, which was of course a load of hypocrisy, and now the NCAA is a gelding and 80% of schools are going to struggle and minor sports are going to get cancelled.
How can UNLV not have that funding, they should easily have the best G5 NIL Collective around... there a 5 Casino execs who graduated from UNLV... maybe hit them up...
