Starting player Matthew Sluka announced he will no longer enjoy for the tournament Rebels, ending UNLV’s fantasy basketball season. Citing imprecise, unfulfilled” commitments”, the older said he will use his redshirt time and get to exchange next season for his final year of eligibility.
Facts are in disagreement. The agent for Slokana told ESPN that his client had received an unidentified Rebels assistant coach’ verbal promise of$ 100, 000 to move to UNLV. He claimed that none of that was being paid, and that the institution and its collective just responded with a payment of$ 12, 000 over four months.
Sluka’s consultant at UNLV claimed in a statement that the player had made “financial demands” for the player to continue playing, which the college thought was in contravention of both state and NCAA regulations. Additionally, it stated that Sluka’s duty were fully met. ( Neither Sluka nor his agent responded to emails requesting comment right away. )

Sluka’s approach is a clear next step in the labor movement for college athletes, regardless of where the truth is. Football players are currently being paid, but they are primarily being compensated for one thing ( playing ), under the guise of something else ( marketing rights ). That universe has much supervision or rules, and because of the wink-and-nod installation, which was forced by the courts as schools like UNLV fight sorely against a more reasonable employee-employer relationship, there’s no larger union or CBA through which Sluka and the school can resolve a disagreement.
Both Sluka narratives—one a spurned swimmer, the other a tough one using mid-season accomplishment to change today’s price—will likely become a more popular part of college football and basketball moving forward. Delivering wealth is simpler than promising it. In the midst of his final year of earning money in football, an athlete has a very simple task in hand.

The NCAA and its people have backed themselves into by allowing NIL through a symbiotic network of state laws without providing Sluka and UNLV with a proper way to define the terms of their involvement. Even the proposed House vs. NCAA settlement, which would impose a$ 22 million cap on revenue sharing with athletes, is another middle ground likely to continue breeding uncertainty.
Sluka surely would n’t be the first college player to sit out for NIL considerations. A 2023 Michigan State football game against Iowa almost did n’t happen, according to Bloomberg’s earlier reporting earlier this month because Spartans players were upset about missing the NIL money they believed they were owed. Former five-star recruit Georgia quarterback Jaden Rashada filed a lawsuit against Gators defender Hugh Hathcock and Florida head coach Billy Napier earlier this year over NIL promises that were broken. Former NC State quarterback MJ Morris halted play in the middle of the previous year to preserve another year of eligibility. Morris’s mid-season status was similar to Sluka’s because NCAA rules permit football players to play up to four games in a season before making a decision to use a one-time redshirt.

What seems likely is that the number will increase, they’ll become increasingly more public, and they’ll remain player- or program-specific. This upcoming bowl season, which includes an expanded 12-team playoff, presents perhaps the most likely next frontier for mid-season negotiation. It’s not far out of the question if players on bowl-bound teams might ask for more money to play the extra games. Small, contained labor disputes are college football’s immediate, unruly future.
Could more instances of Sluka’s suggest a bizarre conclusion: could the narrative inside universities begin to shift toward more of a formal relationship between colleges and their athletes? It seems doubtful, but also not impossible. The potent combination of NIL and transfer freedom is a cocktail that fosters a lot of leverage, and athletes now have much more rights than they did just a few years ago.
Colleges do n’t love this volatility—there are many powerful people in college sports that think the transfer rules, given NIL’s presence, are too player-friendly—and fans will grow increasingly upset by disruptions on their rosters. Will that anger be thrust more at schools, or athletes? Matthew Sluka might soon learn.
( This article has been updated to include UNLV’s comment. )