The college football season is still four months away. However far off that may seem, your favorite team’s schedule was probably put together several years back. Of course, games are arranged by contract. With such a time lag between contracting and performance, universities sometimes attempt to get out of contracts because they receive a better offer. The opportunity may arise to play another school based on an offer of greater media exposure or monetary gain. A weaker team may want to get out of the contract because they are overmatched against a non-conference opponent.

Over the next three days we will examine the structure of these contracts and look at some recent examples of teams trying to change the scheduled dates of their contracted games.

For the 2009 season, Miami of Ohio received an offer to play the University of Kentucky in nearby Paul Brown Stadium in Cincinnati. Unfortunately for Miami, their schedule had already been set, but the lure of this game in Cincinnati against Kentucky with a big pay day was too much for Miami to turn down. Miami’s maneuver set in play a dramatic chains of events affecting schools such as Northwestern, Colorado, Towson, Eastern Michigan and Toledo.

Briefly, Miami of Ohio received an offer to play Kentucky on September 5 in Cincinnati. Miami was already scheduled to play at Northwestern on September 5. This did not deter Miami from attempting to change the dates, setting up a scenario of a falling house of cards. Miami needed Northwestern to change the date of their September 5 game. Northwestern was kind enough to accommodate Miami, but get a load of all these changes that had to take place.  Cooperative N

But wait- there was even more to it than that! Miami was to host Colorado on September 11 in an ESPN televised game. They asked the Mid-American Conference to get them out of the game, knowing that the damages from canceling would be placed at $750,000.00. Luckily for Miami, Toledo stepped up and would host Colorado on September 11 before an ESPN audience. Furthermore, Toledo had to bail on a game at Boise State on 9/12. The MAC forced Miami to take Toledo’s place. All of this was a consequence of Miami’s greed to play at Paul Brown Stadium.

Honestly, this all becomes so confusing that we invite you to let us know if you are aware of any other ramifications involving this labyrinth of schedule changes.

To see an example of a typical contract  click on the link.  The damages section in a contract between two universities can be seen as paramount, and tomorrow we’ll look at that language in a standard contract.