No GOR…you talking about the ‘conference composition clause’?
Yes. The composition clause will affect damages if we leave the conference because the payout to the other members will go down.
Yes, but it doesn’t tie us down to the conference like signing over our GOR. It won’t cost us anything to break the chains. It will affect those who stay back, but probably is scaled depending on who leaves and replaces. I haven’t seen anything about it other than it exists in that tweet
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I’m one of those that don’t believe a grant of rights would prevent anyone from jumping conferences and that the financial hit wouldn’t be significant.
In this case if our leaving the conference makes the media deal worth only half as much then we are on the hook for that net change to the conference.
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A lack of GOR no longer ties UH to the AAC and may have the lowered the value of the deal some, but it does not mean that the schools left behind (assuming UH moves) won’t sue in any case to extort some money from UH. Heck UH might agree to pay them a few million just to avoid a nuisance lawsuit.
I recall reading the day Big 12 invited TCU, their AD wrote a large check to their conference just to forestall any legal action from the conference.
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Sure, but we would be getting 10s of millions in whatever conference takes us. I am sure we (or any other school moving to a ‘power’ conference) would gladly take that hit. ESPN has obviously hedged their bet somewhat with the ‘conference composition clause’ that someone tweeted about, but obviously they’ve included that provision because they anticipate some movement in the future.
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Not sure I’m quite getting you here but…
Yes, if we had signed over our GOR, we would have contractually locked in our rights. We could not have moved to any other conference. It would have been binding and there’s no wiggle room to get out of it. Nothing less than $20mil/yr was worth that.
No, as far as we know now, until we get to see the contract, we are not on the hook for anything if we leave. As P5 mentioned, TCU paid some hush money to the MWC when they left for the B12, but I am sure we would gladly do the same.
What @Moncoog means is that no one has ever challenged the GOR in a courtroom and, anytime it looks like it’s headed that way, things get settled out of court. Many believe that the GOR probably wouldn’t hold up if challenged.
GOR’s are about as binding as you can get and would stand in court. They are not challenged because whoever challenged would lose. They have kept the major conferences together. Movement has occurred between media contracts or re-negotiations of GORs, but once they are locked down, they are binding.
B12 ‘expansion’ in 2016 was the last time the B12 negotiated their GORs with ESPN, and UT and OU did not agree to extend beyond 2025, the next potential movement point.
Riddle me this. If UT just happened to sign a grant of rights with the big 12 but opted to move to the Big 10, who is to say that UT couldn’t chose to play all their conference games in the Big 10 away and simply play weak sisters of the poor at home. The big 12 would be left paying UT top dollar media rights for low dollar ratings attractions and I’d see a rewrite of the grant of rights done pretty quickly.
And that’s not even including the sovereign immunity card UT could play like Maryland did.
Grants of rights are a contract and any contract can be negotiated after the fact.
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newsflash: Most P5 arent any better, but they are getting paid. You think Baylor is better than Boise or Colorado State?
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First you’d have to define better. Secondly the reality is conferences don’t get paid on their depth top to bottom. ESPN is paying for conferences big names the ratings drivers
It’s no different than attendance. Poorer schools count on the gate that the heavyweights bring in on Saturdays. Networks count on big brand names to carry conferences. Nothing in the MWC, AAC or anything else sniffs major college brand recognition. If we did we’d get paid like it.
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This is a legal instrument that the B12, B10 and ACC use to keep their teams in conference. (not sure what system the SEC uses) I am sure there are severe penalties if schools try to play reindeer games as you have suggested, which is why they don’t. Do your own research dude…these are legally binding agreements. So legally binding they’ve kept UT and OU in check until 2025
Research has been done. The big east had very specific and clear cut exit penalties and yet Maryland and Rutgers pretty much thumbed their noses at those contracts and the big east went along with it because juries can, and have, gone against the the spirit, and letter, of not only contracts, but legal statutes.
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They serve the same purpose, but the Maryland, Rutgers, etc. exit fees were different than a grant of rights.
Basically, contacts can’t have “penalties” that bear no relation to the loss that would occur to one party for breaching the contract. Like if we had a penalty in a coach’s contract or something that the coach had to pay us a billion dollars if a coach broke the contract and went somewhere else, that wouldn’t be enforceable because a court would probably say that UH didn’t suffer anywhere close to a billion dollars worth of harm by having to hire a replacement coach. That was the argument Maryland was using. That the $50 million exit fee or whatever didn’t represent the actual harm to the rest of the ACC members when they left. Of course they settled.
A grant of rights is where the members of the conference give their tv rights to the conference as a whole for a certain time period. The reason it may be valid where a penalty/exit fee wouldn’t is like if you sold your house to someone else and transferred the deed over, you can’t just take it back. But you potentially can break a contract to sell your house.
Nobody knows if it would hold up in court or if a court would say it’s just lipstick on a pig and really a penalty.
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They had penalties, before those conferences had GORs
So far, not one school has contested their GOR. It has been pretty much binding for these conferences since they’ve implemented them. I am sure a few have looked into it
What school wants to leave the SEC, BIG 10, ACC, PAC, or big 12?
No reason to contest a grant of rights if you’re happy where you are. Put a GOR on the AAC and I bet you’d see it fought in court.
You don’t think OU wants the hell out of the B12? Or WVU to the ACC? Or any of the PAC teams looking elsewhere? None of them will move until their GORs expire. Thank God we are not bound by them, even at $20mil/yr
I think OU knows they aren’t desirable elsewhere as evidenced by their wallflower fiasco.
WVU was rebuffed by the ACC and is thanking it’s lucky stars it’s in the big 12 instead of the AAC.
Would either rather be elsewhere, sure, but the reality is they are where they belong and won’t fight the GOR.