Arkstfan

Yet no one ever managed 7 votes to block an extension or 8 to go to terminating her.

One thing Karl Marx nailed correctly is that in unfettered capitalism wealth continues to concentrate in fewer and fewer hands. He was wrong about the fix because he didn’t understand human nature. Right now we are seeing it play out in Division I. We went from the NCAA TV contract to the CFA V contract, to every conference for themselves. The everyone for themselves gave us the BCS and the wealthy being ACC, Big Ten, Big Twelve, PAC-10 and SEC, the Big East was an AQ league but the gap between Big East and rest of AQ financially was as big as the gap between Big East and CUSA and MWC was. Now we are moving into an era where the Big Ten and SEC have FU money, ACC and PAC-12 have crazy money. Then we have Big 12 and then on down the ladder MWC and AAC, then Sun Belt, then MAC, then CUSA. Oh and back up there between Big 12 and MWC/AAC you have Big East (as long as new deal comes in as good). The top of the pack is pulling far away and the spread between the lower rungs of the ladder is getting smaller. ACC and PAC-12 can enjoy pulling away from Big 12 but they are cut off from the wealth SEC and Big Ten are going to have. PAC-12 has no viable expansion options that don’t disrupt the stability of the league. In region you’ve got Boise which academically is no place close to PAC-12 members and not as broad a program. Nevada would fit(ish) academically but they are lacking the fan attention, UNLV is a great market but not especially good in what matters and not a fit academically. San Diego State won’t be on radar the UC schools don’t want to add a Cal-State and Stanford and USC certainly don’t consider them peers. Then you’ve got New Mexico who nudges under the wire to fit in academically but tiny market and not great in anything that matters. Like UNLV their hoops peak is in the past. After that you are going into the Central time zone and ridiculous travel and discontent over game start times. The ACC is second banana to SEC and B1G in too many places and too many low interest schools to match the big two. Throw on top of that we have the demographic gap coming in 2025 when the number of 18 year olds drops and dependence on student fees is going to be a hole in the boat for many schools. The demographic gap is going to force wages up and make skipping college appear to be a good choice driving enrollment down even more. Lot of misery ahead for colleges. Makes aligning with the right group more important. Wouldn’t be shocked if travel isn’t a factor in Big 12 decision making. USF to ease some of the non-revenue sports going to UCF. Memphis is in a great geographic location. A DFW team won’t appeal to TCU but might make the others happy. Tulsa if they quit tripping over their own feet could make sense. Taking a flier on Air Force or Colorado State to ease the trip to BYU could work. Boise would have to excite TV to get them to bite off that travel.

The Week 0 solution could be a nice plum for CUSA. I’m sure CBSSN would be more than happy to clear a spot or two. If it were me running CUSA, I’d have something like UTEP-NMSU, WKU-Tech (everybody roots for a meteor strike classic), and MTSU-FIU on week 0 screw the guys who are leaving and try to get some focus on the league it’s going to be. The player safety ploy is smart thinking. No surprise at it got ironed out. I’m sure some wire transfers were made and everyone said good luck to ya with no one meaning it.

If I’m not an overly cheerful and weirdly happy BYU fan (hey such might exist) I’d be very pleased with the Big XII deal. They get a genuine, bona fide blue blood in basketball and you get a conference that is a step up from the peak WAC that had Arizona and Arizona State but lacked the depth of new Big 12 and it’s a step up from peak MWC that had some really outstanding Utah and TCU teams but still lacked the depth the new Big XII likely has. It’s a home run for them but not a grand slam or even two run shot in my opinion. Now my BYU story. Wife and I were poor post-college, post-law school but had saved up and had a beach vacation for just after Christmas lined up, my parents were going to watch the kids. Wife gets an ear infection and doctor rules out flying. So we drive to Memphis to spend a few days. Inexplicably hotels are pretty booked up any place we’d want to be but finally get a room at the Marriott near the Pyramid except for the first night so stay at a Days Inn in a room roughly the size of a VW Beetle. The bed was so close to the dresser and TV had to climb across the bed. We go downtown to Beale Street and landed at Silky’s which I discover is owned by a Tulane alum and it finally hits me. Liberty Bowl. I’d be so busy scrambling for alternate plans had not thought about it. So we are in Silky’s and it’s almost all Tulane fans and a handful of just here to have fun people. In walk five members of the BYU band (jackets were a give away) The five BYU kids order a Sprite. Not a Sprite each. A Sprite and split it. It was then I remembered Coach Edwards explanation of why bowls hated BYU fans. “Our fans go to bowl games with a copy of the 10 Commandments in one hand and twenty dollar bill in the other and they don’t break either of them.”

The “harm” for the SB3 is if they stay they don’t get the CUSA payment for 2022-2023 while playing in Sun Belt they get a distribution that equals or exceeds what they would get had they not defected and certainty exceeds what they would get having given notice and that amount will certainly cover any damages they owe CUSA and leave them with more revenue than if they had stayed. That’s what I’d be explaining to the court.

Meant to add I remember meeting for a game when I was in Dallas for Sun Belt basketball officials conference. I was doing a presentation on tax issues for them as independent contractors and since I was in town caught up with Harry to go to the game. But I’d not be able to pick ya out of a line up but then again I’m horrid at matching names and faces. Once ran into a woman at a store talked to her for a bit and soon as she left asked me wife who the hell was that. Girl I had gone to high school with at a school of 350 students K12. Yall were playing the Cajuns and it was one awful football game. Remember Cajuns scored on one play where QB heaved it as hard as he could. WR had blasted past UNT secondary, he saw the ball was short. Came back and still had five yards on the nearest defender. Cajun defense wasn’t any better. If Preds, Cubs, Broncos or Sporting KC are in the area some time when y’all are home and I don’t have a home football game I’m going to check out the new stadium.

Some agreements aren’t enforceable, no matter what you write down. For example many non-compete agreements are voided as against public policy because they are too broad or too onerous. If I lost our bet on the Stanley Cup you can’t get garnish me or get a lien because it’s not a legal wager, a casino with sports book could enforce it. In most jurisdictions specific performance is difficult to get because courts don’t like the idea of an unwilling party being forced to take actions, they’d rather reduce that to monetary damages. A court isn’t equipped to adjudicate the quality of specific performance so it’s held in disfavor. You can’t get the relief unless a judge says you get it. The Supreme Court has muddied the water even more with the conference having to go to each state to seek specific performance. Based on case law in Arkansas, if you filed for injunctive relief to force Arkansas State to stay in the Sun Belt you probably wouldn’t get it. The Arkansas Supreme Court is aggressive about separation of powers. We have a constitutional amendment from like the 30’s that basically says once the state establishes an agency governed by a board the only control is the power of the purse, appoint new people when vacancies occur or sue them if they violate a state or federal constitutional provision or law. Arkansas courts would hold where to field athletic teams is a decision of the Arkansas State University System Board of Trustees and unless the decision violates the state or federal constitution or laws, it is exclusively their decision and cannot be reviewed by anyone else. If the SB3 have similar separation of powers doctrines an injunction forcing specific performance would not just be against public policy but unconstitutional under state law.

No agreement required. Leave early it’s forego revenue and reimburse league for losses caused by early departure.

This is wrong. The text provided on the LaTech board says schools leaving before 14 month notice must pay damages caused by leaving and the league may seek remedy for the damages up to and including injunction. You and ask for injunctions but courts aren’t obligated to give them to you and the Supreme Court since those bylaws were drafted has said you can’t make a state a defendant in another state’s court and the 11th Amendment says you can’t make them a defendant in Federal Court. SB3 have made it clear they are willing to pay said damages if they exist. CUSA has refused to comply with its bylaws to assess damages (I suspect because they know said damages are nominal). Injunctive relief might have been viable if the schools had said today hey we want to shift early but they said that in December and anyone with reading comprehension knew it was possible if not likely back in October. CUSA is the one not following the bylaws. The bylaws DO NOT say thou must stay 14 months. They say if you leave and give 14 month notice you merely forego league revenue for that time. If you leave sooner you forego revenue AND owe for damages caused.

The conference bylaws are not immaterial. They contemplate teams leaving early and payment of damages for any loss caused. The three have asked CUSA to estimate those damages so they can pay and go. It’s CUSA ignoring the bylaws not the SB3

Every single fan base in CUSA is convinced she was a bad commissioner and believes their school wanted rid of her. Yet there seems to have never been a time when 8 schools said fire her. A 7-7 vote would have denied a contract extension yet that never seems to have happened either.

The math ain’t hard man. Sun Belt is going to give them equitable shares, it will be more than they were making in CUSA before they announced they were leaving. It absolutely will be more than they would make next year otherwise since CUSA is going to retain this year’s check and next years. Absolutely no way at all that CUSA’s damages would be more than their share of Sun Belt money. The estimate has been that two years of CUSA revenue loss is a cost of $3 million divide by 2 that’s $1.5 million per year. So option 1. Lose $1.5 million for 2021-22, lose $1.5 million for 2022-23 for total cost of $3 million. Option 2. Lose $1.5 million for 2021-22, get roughly $2 million in 2022-23 from Sun Belt, pay CUSA damages of say $500,000, pocket the same amount of money they would have received had they stayed in CUSA. Net cost of leaving $1.5 million

Because they know they are liable for damages caused. If TV doesn’t cut CDOA’s payment, then there may be no damages at all. If the payment is cut, then there are damages.

I don’t know precisely how West Virginia operates their colleges but most likely: The state passed a law establishing the school The state appropriates funds each year for its operation. Some state actor (likely the Governor) is charged with appointing the members of a governing board that hires a chief executive for the school. The board approves an operating budget, major contracts, and approves major hires and promotions. Absolutely an agency of the state.

No. Sovereign immunity derives from the English common law principle that the King (or Queen) could not be sued in their own courts. In US jurisprudence it means you cannot sue the state nor it’s agencies without their consent. You are thinking of qualified immunity which applies to the actions of individuals. Basically the only way around sovereign immunity is a 1983 lawsuit where you allege a state actor violated your civil rights while acting under color of state law. If a state employee runs over you in a state owned car while traveling to deliver copy paper to a branch office and kills you, your estate can sue for depriving you of your right to live while performing a state action.

The relevant bylaw as posted on the Tech board contemplates that schools may wish to leave early, it contemplates that damages are to be paid for any harm caused and I’ve covered what potential damages might exist. It further contemplates the possible remedies being damages and injunctive relief. The Supreme Court having swung hard right, in a decision written by Thomas in Franchise Tax Board v Hyatt that overturned Nevada v Hall held that states cannot be sued in the courts of another state. There is a very strong argument that none of the CUSA members that are public state universities can be sued for injunctive relief any place other than their home state. That makes injunctive relief problematic from a jurisdictional standpoint problematic. Beyond that, as a general principle (which varies by state) courts strongly frown on specific performance as a remedy. If you agree to sell me the Honus Wagner baseball card and breach, I can probably get specific performance because I can’t get another one. A Willie Mays rookie card? Well you owe me the difference between the price you offered to sell it at and the price I had to pay to go buy one from another seller. So going in knowing the principles of specific performance in the courts the conference couldn’t reasonably expect to get it unless fare more time critical. Further there is a duty to mitigate. If I own a contracting company building a bridge for the state and my contract has a performance penalty if I’m late, and we are preparing for a concrete pour of 1000 yards on April 3 and you are my sub to do the pour and call me today and say I can’t do it and yell at you and say I gotta contract I expect you to be here and hang up and on April 3 you don’t show up and I find another sub but they can’t do it until April 10 and charge me more for it being a rush and that delay results in my being two days later handing over the bridge and penalized $10,000 per day. I sue you. Claiming the higher cost of the pour and the late penalty. The first thing your attorney is going to say is I should have mitigated damages. If I had called concrete subs I probably would have found one willing to do it close to your price instead of the rush price and my failure to mitigate by waiting until you didn’t show is why I got hit with the late penalty and you will argue (likely successfully) that you don’t owe the late penalty and only a reasonable amount for the concrete. Likewise if I hung up from your call and ran to the courthouse and sued you for specific performance the court is likely going to say, call some subs get quotes and order you to pay the difference and send me on my way. EDIT Forgot an actual case. Louisville had a football contract with one of the ACC privates, I think it was Duke, and Duke backed out. Louisville sued for specific performance because they were an AQ (BCS era, Louisville was CUSA) and Duke’s counter was we suck in football and any opponent is a suitable replacement so we owe the cancellation fee and nothing else and the judge agreed.

And I’m not even charging

Everyone seems to think breaking a contract is some massive thing. It happens multiple times per day all across the country. SB3 do see Sun Belt as a more attractive destination. USM and Marshall approached Sun Belt before last football season. SBC has finished ahead of CUSA in CFP performance pool distributions. Is on the ESPN platform across the board and bringing in more TV money than CUSA. Some people think it’s still a decade ago and CUSA isn’t the new WAC. The three owe damages for what CUSA will lose in revenue. They won’t impact NCAA units or CFP distribution. Unlikely any drop or notable drop in sponsorship income. The only loss would be if the TV partners want to pay less. ESPN isn’t likely asking for a cut because they want this to go nice and smooth. So any lost revenue is from CBSSN and Stadium, the latter being a scrappy underdog searching for an audience may well want a fee cut. CBSSN is part of a major conglomerate they will do whatever their value voodoo doctors say. If it were pro rate we are talking maybe $400,000 a head but that seem unlikely given that is what Army paid to get out early quite a few years ago. ODU probably is valued below the median for the league and Marshall and USM above the median. Straight pro rata each would owe 7.1% of the value of the contracts for the year, a combined 21.4%. If TV drops 21.4% of say $7 million that’s $500,000 per head. Pretty manageable. If you are CUSA and the contract is $7 million and TV wants to cut the payment say 40% for losing the three that is just over $933,333 a head. Once the payment amount emerges and it becomes obvious the three represented 40% of CUSA’s TV value, that’s a big PR blow. So do you take the PR blow that losing the three represents more than losing 3/14ths of your value or do you avoid that with tough talk and trying to make them play? It’s one thing to take a value hit losing teams to AAC, but when the conference hasn’t sold itself as anything more than a step up for Sun Belt losing more than 3/14ths of value to Sun Belt is major egg on your face since programs of value chose Sun Belt over CUSA. The gossip monger claim La Tech is driving the bus on the fight fight fight strategy. I doubt FIU gives a crap or their president spends much time thinking about athletics and would roll with the majority. MTSU? Who knows they blew up WKU’s plan to go to MAC to get the enhanced 2022-23 and 2023-24 payments and entry payments. They might be inclined to support a nice payout, especially since they paid to get out of SBC early. WKU? Who knows where their head is after pitching to Sun Belt and MAC and getting jilted. Vengeance of forced play might suit them. UTEP who knows with them. If courts rule that Tax Board v. Hyatt applies, CUSA is going to have to travel to state courts in each school’s county to ask for an order forcing the team to play in CUSA. Could be wild as all get out if one or two courts grant injunction and one or two refus.

I think some of the mad dash to sign kids to NIL deals is going to fade. Lot of business owners are going to look at the numbers and conclude the deals just don’t produce a sufficient return on investment. So some will quit doing them. Then you are left with a few legit deals and a lot of some successful booster throwing the money to try to win. That’s where things get scary. What if Mr. Booster wants the 5-11 QB from his kid’s school who racked up big numbers because of the system the coach runs? Coach going to sign the kid because if he doesn’t Mr Booster might pout and not help land the guys they really want? What happens if a stud player makes Mr Booster mad and he doesn’t want to keep the money train going because he thinks the kid is disrespectful or arrogant? I suspect it’s hello portal. The kids who build big followings on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube can finally cash in. That’s a good thing. Truth is few college players have any notable NIL value. Look at the NBA. We all know that there are guys with massive contracts with shoe companies and whatever, but there’s quite a few starters with pretty modest deals and lot of guys in the NBA their endorsement contract is nothing more than wear our shoes and we will give you X dollars store credit to buy our merchandise. The 11th and 12th guys on a typical roster don’t have a deal at all. One of the first NIL deals at AState was a local pizza place signing the #2 RB which told me the owner is a fan because every game the board is loaded with why isn’t he getting more carries posts. They went for the fan favorite 🙂

We keep up with our former coaches. Some of it’s boring like Steve Roberts being director of Arkansas Activities Association (governing body for high school sports in the state). Some of it wildly entertaining like Freeze’s time at Ole Miss and Harsin vs Auburn boosters. Odd ball was John Bobo who last I heard had taken a junior high PE teaching job to stay around his kid. Thing I’ve found is that guys who get a crack at being FBS head coaches tend to be pretty exceptional dudes. They might not be cut out for running an FBS program but they tend to be interesting people who are well above the median person. Sort of neat seeing what they do after.

Sun Belt hasn’t released a schedule. Rumor mill says SBC did schedules for just the 10, the 10 plus JMU, the 10 plus ODU, USM, Marshall, and the 10 plus all four. I am failing to see what “screwing” is taking place. An 8 game slate with 11 teams isn’t hard to draft. The Big Ten did it for decades. The only potential change in revenue is if the TV partners cut their distribution but that is resolved by the three paying the damages. It isn’t going to cost UNT anything to replace USM with a different CUSA team on the various schedules.

I don’t sweat the P5 doing it because it’s not like we were getting the recruits that the folks down in Austin were signing. The G5 worry is someone has a sugar daddy with money to burn who starts spending $20,000 a head for endorsements of their business. Here’s a fun twist to NIL. Most foreign players can’t sign them because they are on student visas that prohibit working.

NIL is not supposed to be paid by the school. If the school pays it, the school is now an employer and subject to state wage and hour regulations, FICA and Medicare and income tax withholding. They would need to provide worker’s compensation coverage. Right now the NCAA has a cluster on it’s hands because they’ve failed to come up with a regulator scheme that lays out the rules. A prime example is the boast one school made that some group was going to pay $50,000 to each offensive lineman. Common sense tells us that is not compensation based on the player’s name, image, or likeness because the name, image, and likeness are unknown. That’s not an NIL offer, that is an offer to play football for compensation and should be treated as such. That’s straight professionalism. Until these outlaw deals arrived players got “full cost of attendance” the school financial aid office calculates the cost of tuition, books, fees, room, board, and incidentals such as travel, laundry and such. Schools are not supposed to provide benefits beyond the full cost of attendance in headcount sports like football. In equivalency sports (such as track), the student can either receive full cost (ie. a full ride) or a partial scholarship. I think the minimum in Division I is either 1/4th or 1/3rd of full-cost in an equivalency sport. Players are required to report their deals to the school and I presume the school to the NCAA. The school can limit use of school trademarks and restrict certain categories of advertising. The school can filter and compile offers for players. NIL is in theory a good thing for players. If fans want a Joe Smith jersey, then Joe ought to get some compensation. If someone wants to Joe to advertise sunglasses, pizza, or shoes, more power to him. Remember Jeremy Bloom? He was rated the #1 moguls skier in the world and had endorsement income (though I think it was mostly in merchandise with not a lot of cash) and wanted to play football at Colorado. The NCAA said you can’t have that income and endorse products while playing football. Bloom didn’t live up to his rating and finished 9th in the Olympics and that same day the NCAA ruled that he couldn’t keep the money and stuff and endorse ski products based on his skiing ability while playing NCAA football. It was a ridiculous decision. NCAA prevailed and he lost his last two years of eligibility for football. The courts upheld the NCAA saying yeah we get it that this is legit income based on skiing but if we rule in your favor, the whole thing will become a sham with players being paid to play football under the guise of being paid for something else. The NCAA and schools have to find a way to not interfere with legitimate deals while heading off contracts based solely on paying the kid to play football.

This isn’t a Middle Earth quest where good and evil face off, or there are do-gooders vs baddies. Contracts are and partnership agreements are designed to deal with an agreement coming to an end. CUSA’s agreement from what has been posted on the Tech board is vague on the matter of how to deal with someone leaving early. It says the league can recover damages but does not have a liquidated damages clause (ie. We are going to save the problem of calculating damages by just agreeing it is X dollar amount). That’s not good planning but it is what is. It does say the league can ask for injunctive relief, essentially specific performance. The problem is courts normally don’t like to force people to go do something they don’t want to do, they prefer to assess monetary damages and get the file marked closed rather than have the specter of having to revisit if the parties disagree on how well the forced performance is being done. The hitch for CUSA is when the league gets the vapors explaining how it’s too late, they can’t adjust the schedule, they are going to be asked, “Did the schools tell you they wanted to leave early?” Then the next question is “Knowing their intention, why didn’t you prepare an 8 game schedule for 11 teams in the event they went forward?” It’s no different from the (fairly) well known case where a guy got metal in his eye and needed two surgeries, doctors got his distance vision back close to normal but his near vision required corrective lenses (glasses). The guy refused to get glasses and part of his claim was he couldn’t perform work requiring near vision and had lost a couple jobs because of that poor vision. Court held that buying glasses wasn’t unreasonable. He could get damages for the cost of them but couldn’t collect damages because of he couldn’t work when he refused to mitigate. CUSA had no obligation to negotiate release terms. That’s simply a norm, customary behavior. CUSA does not have to behave like other conference or even as it has in the past such as the early release of Army. What CUSA did have an obligation to do is take another hour and prepare a back-up schedule for 11 teams in the event the three went forward with departing and it is unlikely a judge will be sympathetic to CUSA for any mayhem caused by failing to mitigate by preparing a second schedule. CUSA can sue and try to prove the early departure cost the league X dollars in revenue or they can simply contact the schools directly and say we think you are causing X dollars in damages by leaving early and try to sort it out rather than “maybe” going for the moon shot of an injunction. If CUSA goes the injunctive route, CUSA will file suit in state court in Texas, most likely each school will file suit in their own state seeking declaratory judgment that CUSA and a state court in Texas cannot force an agency of the state to perform acts that the governing body of the agency said to not do (ie. Play in CUSA instead of Sun Belt). Going the court route is not smart unless the schools refuse to pay reasonable damages because it’s going to be a morass that lasts into 2023 or longer.

You are confused. They are all willing to live up to their obligations to CUSA by paying financial compensation to leave early. They aren’t asking for a free pass. Back when FAU and MTSU were invited to CUSA, this board would have been enraged had Sun Belt refused to negotiate an early departure. Had AAC offered you a slot next year, you would be screaming your head off if CUSA refused to negotiate. FIU left the Atlantic Sun a year early to join the Sun Belt and they paid the ASun in return for that just as FAU and MTSU did leaving Sun Belt. Sun Belt negotiated an early release for UCF. Army paid CUSA $400,000 to leave a year early. The only thing different here is CUSA violating the norms by refusing to negotiate a price for early departure. Frankly I’m not sure if y’all are in love with CUSA and having second thoughts about leaving or are just jealous you can’t go out early too.