FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — For those Arkansas fans who put themselves to bed each night to dreams of UNLV coach Barry Odom one day walking the sidelines in Razorback Stadium as the Hogs head coach, it’s probably time to put those to rest now.
With the recent news of the Rebel’s starting quarterback leaving the team in the middle of an undefeated playoff run because of what Matthew Sluka and his family describe as intentionally misleading the Holy Cross transfer to get him to come to Las Vegas, it’s best Odom backers put their support behind either Sam Pittman continuing to win games or defensive coordinator Travis Williams as more or less a coach in waiting. There is no way Odom can take on an SEC job now.
The No. 1 priority in being competitive in the SEC is recruiting through the NIL. That’s not something Odom will be able to effectively do at Arkansas.
Every coach in the conference, plus neighboring Big 12 schools, will immediately point to Sluka walking out and the comments his family publicly made against Odom and his program. Like it or not, the narrative is UNLV promised its quarterback $100,000, then told him they’d pay up $12,000 and actually paid $3,000.
“We’re a hardworking family,” Bob Sluka told ESPN. “To be able to have an athlete like Matt, we don’t even really care that much about the money. But there is a principle to it. He’s not the first athlete to have this happen. We’ve heard it from a million kids that they don’t get their money. So maybe Matt has to be the poster boy, but we don’t want him to. But we’re not going to have Barry Odom just stand up and say, ‘F you, I’m not paying you, get your ass out on the field.'”
If Odom comes to Arkansas, every coach in the conference will have that last sentence printed out and folded neatly in their wallets to proudly show every time the Hogs look like a threat to take a key recruit. The unfortunate side of this was clearly defined by Pittman at the SEC teleconference this week.
“We all are concerned about it, to be honest with you,” Pittman said. “What happened, he said, she said, all that. The one thing about a football coach is you can’t really comment on those things and the kid can. The kid can, the agent can, whoever can, but you can’t.”
That’s the part that permanently makes Odom untouchable for the Razorbacks now. While there is an effort underway to paint this as a player trying to make additional financial demands after seeing success on the field, that hasn’t drawn nearly as many headlines as those touting Sluka “redshirting” rather than continue to play for Odom for failing to pay promised money.
Odom has often been quoted as saying he believes in all players receiving equal NIL payments so no one feels more important or valued above anyone else. Whether that’s actually true is hard to discern from 1,352 miles away.
If it is, it adds credibility to Odom’s claim. Just not enough to keep him a viable candidate in the most cut-throat conference in all of college football.
