April 23, 2009

How often do you see a lesser college football team going into a gigantic mismatch against a college football powerhouse? In 2008 Texas invited Florida Atlantic to play in Austin for a guaranteed $900,000.00, Coastal Carolina went to Penn State for $450,000.00, and Appalachian State received $750,000.00 to visit LSU in Baton Rouge. And don’t forget what App. State did to Michigan in 2007 for $400,000.00!

All of the above is agreed upon far in advance in the standard college football contract. As you can see from the above examples, compensation to the visiting team can vary greatly. By far and away the most interesting part of the contracts deals with damages if one team breaches the contract. Recall yesterday’s piece where Miami of Ohio was scheduled to play Colorado at Miami and then pulled out. Miami was looking at paying $750,000.00 in damages to Colorado if the Buffaloes could not come up with a suitable replacement. To add fuel to the fire this game was scheduled to be televised by ESPN on September 11, 2009. Colorado demanded that ESPN still televise the replacement game. Luckily for the Mid-American conference Toledo stepped up to host the game, which will still be on ESPN. Toledo’s help saved Miami $750,000.00. In return Miami of Ohio was forced to take Toledo’s place on the blue turf of Boise State.

Damages clauses are not to be confused with impossibility clauses. For example, over the last few seasons hurricanes or the threat of hurricanes have caused several games to be postponed to a later date or cancelled. Going back to the national tragedy of September 11, 2001 there were games that were cancelled and never made up because of schedule conflicts.

link to example contract

The damage clause forces the team backing out of the contract to be on the hook for an agreed upon sum if the contract is breached. Usually, the team that suffered the breach of contract is required to find a team of similar stature to replace the team that breached the contract. That is often not easy. In tomorrow’s installment we will look at one of the more interesting examples of a breach of contract in the last few years- the case of Louisville v. Duke, and Duke’s very interesting defense for their breach of contract.