Arkstfan

Exactly. A conference is an equity partnership. Each member gets one share of equity in the league. When Bill Gates retired, he retained his equity in Microsoft in the form of stock and is entitled to the dividends, voting rights, and hopefully for him gain in stock prices in the future. With a conference, if you leave you give your equity (stock) in the conference back to the league. If UNT goes to the Sweet 16 this year, you won’t see any of the money other than the NCAA travel reimbursement because you’ve turned in your stock and CUSA will collect the three units you contributed for the next six years. CUSA will snag roughly $840,000 from your run in the 2023-24 NCAA distribution (runs a year behind) and for each of the five years following. A $5 million income stream you have a 1/14th interest in (probably more, most leagues bonus some of that to the school earning it) but you traded in your equity and right to future payments to depart the partnership.

CUSA has an income stream for various sources NCAA Units. Will early departure lower that? No. CFB distribution. Will early departure lower that? Eh that’s pretty speculative. CUSA has been running 4th in the performance pool so coin flip as to whether that stays or changes. CUSA will still have 11 members so will get the base $10 million(ish) The only change to the revenue stream is whether or not the TV partners cut the distribution if the three leave. If they cut it, then it’s all real simple, they owe for the cut in 2022-23 distributions. Imagine you and 13 friends own a business as partners. The business has a pretty stable income stream (say lot of money tied up bonds). The partnership agreement says if you leave for a competitor you work for a year without a partnership distribution and forego any future distributions because you forfeit your equity. What happens if you quit to go to work for a competitor, you work for one year and lose your equity and right to partnership distributions in perpetuity. Now what if your offer is such that you want to forego the year of work? They can sue you and ask for specific performance and make you stay, but courts in general don’t like specific performance unless dealing with something unique with no substitute. Say you are buying a Honus Wagner baseball card or a Monet painting. Hard to substitute if the seller cannot deliver. Otherwise you go to money damages. What are the money damages? Well there is the value of the home games schools would lose except when you deal with money damages, you have a duty to mitigate. If you make an 8 game slate out of the 11 members there’s no home gate revenue lost and that home gate isn’t shared so CUSA doesn’t have a dog in that fight. The individual schools would but then if say UNT sues USM, USM is going to sue CUSA and ask them to be joined as a necessary party because they failed to mitigate by adjusting the schedule thus carrying some liability to UNT as well. The only logical monetary damages would be the loss of revenue but as noted CUSA won’t lose NCAA unit revenue, won’t lose base CFB revenue, performance pool is speculative, loss of attendance at CUSA championship events? Speculative. TV and sponsorship income is it. If the Bank of Norfolk is a CUSA sponsor and drops it a year early that we can assign value to. If CBSSN cuts the payment, we can assign value to that. The damages just aren’t likely to be a lot. The only difference in UNT and USM is if CUSA revenue declines because UNT leaves, that’s tough noogies for CUSA since you are riding it out. USM would owe 1/3rd of what CUSA loses in revenue in 2022-23 that resulted from the departure. Well 6 members of CUSA don’t consider it so unique and valuable that they

The fee is you forego a payment from CUSA for the 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons and all future seasons because you left. The three would rather go to Sun Belt, get paid for 2022-23 and pay for that privilege in addition to not taking a share of CUSA revenue.

Exactly. They want to forego sitting around without league revenue for two years. They WANT to pay a financial penalty in lieu of playing 2022-23 in CUSA with CUSA keeping their cut of revenue

An article saying “about” $3 million ain’t saying it’s three million. Tech board has bylaws. You forfeit your cut of revenue. You don’t pay a fixed amount.

Contracts exist not just to exchange X for Y, they also exist to set terms when X is not exchanged for Y. Contracts literally exist to provide for what happens when the parties no longer wish to do business with each other. If you put down earnest money to buy your house and change your mind about buying you aren’t forced to buy the house, you give up the deposit you put down. Per what Tech fans have posted of bylaws, it’s murky at best what recourse CUSA has for an early departure. It contemplates payment of damages but doesn’t provide a method to calculate said damages. Unless YouTube, tinder and whomever else is paying less for their departure monetary harm to CUSA seems unlikely

How do you figure they are negotiating for less? No one writes a check to the conference they just don’t get a cut. Unless you think tv partners are going to cut the payout because they are gone the CUSA revenue stays the same and the cut stays five ways. They are not shafting CUSA out of money, they are offering to write a check to increase CUSA revenue.

Presidents and chancellors call the shots. There’s five voting members, one of whom was able to leave Sun Belt early via negotiation

That speaks to the infamous exit fee. It’s written for dramatic effect. Reality is CUSA has a pot of money it has been splitting 14 ways. Once the schools said they were leaving the departing teams get their distribution cut off. League distributes roughly $21 million a year. They split that 14 ways until everyone said they were leaving. Nobody is writing CUSA a check to leave, they just don’t get their 1/14th cut wired in each year. So the leftovers will get $4.2 million wired to their accounts until the league revenue changes and new members start sharing. Article is also incorrect in saying the three will be charged around $2 million in entry fees. Sun Belt is not assessing an entry fee because ESPN is making the league whole with the TV deal. The point of entry fee is to offset the existing members getting less because of the split change. The folks at ESPN are boosting the TV revenue so there is no revenue drop to offset.

Same reason MTSU and FAU wanted out and Sun Belt was able to negotiate the same with them in a mere two months. We are coming up on four months and all three claim CUSA won’t even talk to them about it. But CUSA sure thought it was imperative for Sun Belt to release MTSU and FAU early.

Or CUSA could act like grown-ups the way the Sun Belt did when MTSU and FAU wanted to leave early and do what anyone in business with any sense does and negotiates terms of early departure instead of refusing to even discuss it. There was no big drama when the two of them wanted out without following the conference constitution and bylaws. The Sun Belt and the two schools talked and worked out a deal. Conference USA of course isn’t led well, efficiently or maturely and so has refused to act in the same manner. CUSA invited MTSU and FAU on November 28, 2012 and by January 22, 2013 a deal was hammered out to permit their early departure. USM, Marshall, ODU were invited October 22, 2021, the schools have asked to negotiate an agreement and have been ignored. If anyone needs it STUCK TO THEM, it’s the trash in CUSA that can’t offer reciprocal decency even with an extra month headstart.

Sun Belt is prepared to proceed as a 14 team league because the three schools notified us in December that they had let CUSA know they intended to depart. I’m told we have schedules for 10, 11, and 14 schools (current only, current plus JMU who is announced in now, and all four newcomers). The way I see it CUSA has two paths here. 1. Stick to their guns and run to the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Texas seeking an injunction to prevent the departure and depending on the judge they draw that might range from hummm OK I’ll issue a TRO and set it for hearing all the way to hey these people told you two months ago their intention, why did you take no steps to protect yourself by drafting alternate schedules? Upside is it could force the teams to stay, might enhance odds of damages if judge says you can leave but gotta pay. Downside is it could face plant and create a scramble to fix the schedule (unless of course there is already an 11 game schedule drafted). In a scramble situation schools could get shorted a game. If that happens, the east will bear the brunt losing 2 instead of 1 and that’s a shaky plan given that three of the five not leaving are in the east. If AAC6 schools get hit, then that hands them their own potential claim against CUSA for failing to deliver a reasonable schedule especially if AAC6 bears the brunt of the mess, and getting some of the withheld departure money back. 2. Complain moan, saber-rattle a lawsuit, offer arbitration or mediation to settle it all in exchange for CUSA going forward with an 11 team schedule. Upside it protects the members Downside harder to claim much in damages if you can make some spreadsheet entries and fix it one afternoon.

The bylaws posted on the LaTech board don’t have a dollar figure. Just says you still owe any debts or assessments and forfeit your share of revenue if you leave with 14 month notice and if you leave early you owe additionally for any damages caused but doesn’t specify a dollar figure.

Exit fee ain’t cash from what I’ve seen posted, just the conference keeps their money so that doesn’t change just they don’t play next year and SBC is apparently not doing a buy in so instead of getting nothing next year they get 1/14th share of SBC.

I doubt with six wins between them, any will lose sleep over being barred from the CUSA men’s tournament and it’s no different from what JMU is facing. Sort of late to boot them off the baseball and softball schedules even if they get barred from the tournament, again same thing JMU is dealing with. Men’s and women’s indoor track, need a few more hotel rooms than already booked to get them to Birmingham for the indoor track championship. Women’s golf can accommodate them in Daytona. Men is at El Dorado, AR. Hotel rooms might be an issue there for the four newcomers. Men’s and women’s tennis in Peachtree City, GA, they can handle a few more teams no sweat. Outdoor track in Mobile, no issue there. Only problem for them is potentially men’s and women’s hoops, baseball and softball. In return they land where they want to be. Cost is not a big whoop. CUSA keeps their cut of revenue either way, and they go on the dole with the Sun Belt starting July 1, so financially a win. CUSA may file to get specific performance, courts generally don’t like specific performance though I have no idea how Texas courts are and Texas courts are the only one where the court would have jurisdiction over all the parties.

Yeah we were hearing they expected it to all be worked out by the start of the year, the middle of January at the very latest and that didn’t happen.

All three released statements that they were terminating CUSA membership effective June 30 this year.

Sun Belt presidents were adamant they were only adding two, until they found out the value of adding JMU and ODU. No conference not in peril adds schools that don’t bolster revenue and you certainly don’t take money out of your own wallet when you have plenty of schools. UL, ULM, are the only members with leadership who has dealt with Tech. Georgia State didn’t want Georgia Southern. Leadership didn’t care that GAState didn’t want them the others did. If the money was there, UL and ULM would have been ignored and lost the vote 10-2

It apparently does given that when they signed their deal it was richer than CUSA and Sun Belt deals.

So if y’all suck AAC changes their mind after a few years you should be sent packing. Got it.

We signed a four year contract. We lived up to it. They weren’t members and they too had ditched us showing how evil it is to give them a break for four years.

When Tech bailed and we needed enough schools to be a league ULM was there. When the NCAA mandated 8 full members we survived thanks to ULM. ULM has three P5 wins I can think of off the top of my head as a Sun Belt member and just a few weeks ago beat Liberty.

Ah ya picked a drama queen for your lil drama 🤣

Nope. Maybe that’s the big city way but you don’t stab folks who have been there for you when the feces hit the fan.

BFD. Dont piss on us telling us WE should add them. If you’re concerned. Invite them.