What's been wrought

Watched an old ESPN doc called "Pony Excess" the other day, and, man, it was refreshing. It was about the Wild West days at SMU in the 1980s, when the good ol' boy alums bought themselves a juggernaut football team with cars and cash and what-not, and even a Texas governor (Bill Clements) was complicit in the deal.

Eventually, because SMU wouldn't stop paying its players, the NCAA slapped the school with the only death penalty it's ever handed down. 

So what was refreshing about all that?

Even the cheaters had lines they wouldn't cross then.

One of 'em was, if you promised to pay a kid, you paid the kid -- which was how SMU wound up getting the death penalty, because when the NCAA told them to stop paying kids, they still felt duty-bound to honor their existing contracts. So they kept paying 'em, and the NCAA dropped Thor's hammer on 'em.

The other thing was, if you bought a kid, the kid tended to stay bought.

Well ... not anymore, apparently.

See, buying players is perfectly above-board now -- and let's face it, that's what the NIL structure amounts to -- but because the NCAA completely botched the NIL rollout, the Wild West is even Wilder than it was in the under-the-table days. Which is to say, there are no rules whatsoever, and therefore no lines that can't be crossed.

Enter Matthew Sluka, who's quarterbacking UNLV so well the Rebels are off to a 3-0 start.

Make that, was quarterbacking UNLV so well.

Sluka, see, announced this week he won't play another down for UNLV this season. A fifth-year senior, he's going to redshirt instead and then (presumably) transfer portal himself to another sucker, er, school to play next year. And it's apparently because UNLV didn't come through with the NIL money it promised when Sluka transferred there from his last school.

Which was FCS school Holy Cross, where in four years he finished first in career pass efficiency, second in career rushing yards (3,583), second in career rushing touchdowns (38), fifth in career passing yards (5,916) and fifth in career touchdown passes (59).

The kid's damn good, in other words. Good enough that in UNLV's 3-0 start, he's thrown for 318 yards and six TDs and run for 286 yards and another score.

But now he's quitting, right in the middle of the season. And if want to ask "What kind of person quits on his teammates in the middle of a season because he thinks he's not getting his?", you'd be absolutely correct to do so.

Except.

Except the unregulated transfer portal and NIL has turned young men like Matthew Sluka into nothing but studs for hire, and studs for hire by definition are loyal only to themselves. No pay; no play. That's how the marketplace works, and college football is nothing but a marketplace now.

And as for teammates ... 

Really? Does a kid who jumps from one school to the next two or three times even think in those terms? Does he even stick around long enough to learn all his "teammates'" names?

I'd bet cash money right now there are players on the UNLV roster Sluka doesn't know from Adam, and never will. And I rarely bet cash money on anything.

Understand, this is not to single out Sluka in particular or any kid looking for the main chance these days. True, college athletics are a purely mercenary enterprise for them, but they've been a mercenary enterprise for a long time. You can't very well ding Matthew Sluka, after all, if you're not also willing to ding Brian Kelly or Lincoln Riley or virtually any other marquee coach these days.

Like Sluka, they, too, are mercenaries. They, too, prioritize their own interests. And, yes, they, too, quit on their teams in pursuit of greener pastures for themselves.

Young people learn from their elders, surprise, surprise. And now they're utterly free to follow their lead and sell themselves to the highest bidder.

Pardon me if I miss the days when they had to do that on the sly. Seemed cleaner, somehow.