College GameDay debates controversial NIL move

College GameDay had a lengthy and very good discussion on Saturday morning around NIL and the state of college football after UNLV quarterback Matthew Sluka’s stunning departure from the program over a failed NIL deal.

Throughout this week, pretty much everyone in the college football universe has come to the conclusion that the current NIL setup is in no way sustainable given there are no guardrails for players, schools, or anyone else. Sluka and UNLV came out with their own interpretations of what happened , but the end result is a team that was a contender for the Group of Five playoff berth is now facing an uncertain future thanks to a financial dispute.

The GameDay discussion deserves to be watched in full with Nick Saban, Desmond Howard, Pat McAfee, and Kirk Herbstreit all giving their perspective on how the sport can solve the current NIL quandary. Revenue sharing, employment, federal legislation, and any other solution is all on the table.

But at the end of the segment, host Rece Davis addressed Sluka and his decision to leave UNLV after just three games, saying the quarterback should not have bailed on the team. And that if he didn’t get his NIL agreement in writing, he has to own that for himself.

“It is probably true that he was promised something, likely, and it was not delivered. That’s likely true. It is obviously true he did not have it in writing. If you make a dumb mistake in life, if I do, if Matthew Sluka does, or whoever, sometimes you have to wear that, man. And going in there and expecting something without writing and then they don’t give it to you, you can’t just bail on the team. You’ve gotta wear the fastball in the ribs sometimes and go ‘that was my bad,'” Davis said.

In fairness to Sluka, Davis also called it “despicable” that someone at UNLV or associated with the program could have made an NIL promise to the quarterback that was not fulfilled.

Saban and Herbstreit also questioned Sluka’s decision, sacrificing the value he creates for his future for a short-term financial decision.

“At the end of the day, what kind of value did this young man make for himself by making this decision,” Saban asked. “Being put in this situation and then making this decision. What kind of real value does he create for his future by doing this? And that’s the unfortunate thing about all this.”

It’s a terrible situation in which there are no winners. Certainly UNLV is not feeling good about the situation they find themselves in with a starting quarterback leaving the program after not getting NIL money he says he was promised. Even with the sudden impact on this year’s team, what about future recruiting? Sluka can’t feel good about his decision either, sacrificing what he was accomplishing on the field to stand up for what he believes he is worth. And college football can’t feel good that star players are now attached to their universities by the smallest of threads and the NIL system has turned into a pay-for-play dynamic for all intents and purposes.

And as the entire GameDay discussion indicated, something has to be done to fix it. But is there anybody in college football capable of doing so?

The post Rece Davis questions Matthew Sluka’s UNLV departure over NIL: ‘You can’t just bail on the team’ appeared first on Awful Announcing .