At long last, people are interested in Matthew Sluka.
We discovered Sluka two years ago. My sister-in-law went to Holy Cross, so I took interest in their suddenly good football team, especially when they ran into South Dakota State in the FCS Quarterfinals. I don’t know much, but I know my FCS football, and Holy Cross’s trip to Brookings was the exact reason why. If you’ve never watched the 40th-best college football team in the country host the 130th-best college football team in the country with a potential trip to the national championship in the mix, you’re missing out. Especially when that game’s in South Dakota in December. Especially when that game involves a bowling ball of a quarterback, one graced with red hair and an on-field disposition which I assume only comes from growing up amidst the weirdness of Long Island.
A lot of people who know college football well are citing Sluka’s passing stats today and saying, “Lol how will UNLV ever replace this 44% passer.” They are accompanying these tweets with eye roll emojis. But their eyes are not the only ones rolling. Those of us who know Sluka’s game? We’re rolling our eyes at them. If you think Sluka’s a bad quarterback because he only completes 44% of his passes, you do not know college football as well as you think you do. You may know it well, but you have a 6’3” blind spot.
The first thing you should know about Matthew Sluka is that he’s a good enough passer to make the running work. The running is not a product of any system. The running is a product of Matthew Sluka. Matthew Sluka runs like a headless chicken blessed with Shohei Ohtani’s physique. Matthew Sluka runs like he wants to truck stick you while also stabbing you with a knife. The passing? Merely a tool to keep defenses honest, to keep defensive backs within the ten-yard radius of wide receivers into which Matthew Sluka can throw. The point of Matthew Sluka is to incite chaos with his bowed helmet when the play has broken down, to instill fear in defensive coordinators who must prepare their players not for a crisp, complex passing attack but for guerrilla warfare in the form of a quarterback.
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way:
What in the golly heck is happening at UNLV?
The backstory here is that after that South Dakota State game (Holy Cross lost but dammit it was fun), Sluka played one more season in Worcester before entering the transfer portal while head coach Bob Chesney left Holy Cross for James Madison. Sluka landed at UNLV, beginning this year by leading the Rebels to victories over Houston and Kansas. UNLV opened the season 3–0, and then? Then, last night, Sluka quit the team, saying he wasn’t given what UNLV promised.
Sluka’s statement read, in part: “I committed to UNLV based on certain representations that were made to me, which were not upheld after I enrolled.” In the time since, his agent (Marcus Cromartie) and father (Bob Sluka, obviously he’s named Bob) have stated that Sluka was given a verbal offer of $100,000 from offensive coordinator Brennan Marion, and that UNLV only ever paid Sluka $3,000 or $6,000 (reports vary). The elder Sluka told ESPN that Barry Odom, UNLV’s head coach, told him the $100,000 offer wasn’t valid because Marion made it, not him.
Immediately, UNLV started muddying the waters, with a number of UNLV-friendly figures saying Sluka had quit because he was approached with better offers for next year. (By quitting after three games, Sluka preserved an extra year of eligibility.) Was this true? We don’t know. Sluka’s side has gone on the record more than UNLV has, but it’s early and the story is developing.
The likeliest story is probably that Sluka got tricked, both by UNLV and by his agent. If you’re an agent and you get tricked, you tricked your client. They thought you wouldn’t get tricked. You got tricked. It wasn’t intentional on your part, but you still messed up.
But, there are other possibilities, and the drama has the potential to get even more dramatic. Hopefully, in the end, it leads to:
1. More formalized NIL contracts being signed in the future.
2. Greater Matthew Sluka awareness.
We wrote this because of the second one. Do not pretend Matthew Sluka needs to throw the ball well to be a riot on the field.
