(07-26-2015 09:26 PM)Soobahk40050 Wrote: [ -> ] (07-26-2015 08:02 PM)JRsec Wrote: [ -> ] (07-26-2015 02:41 PM)ClemVegas Wrote: [ -> ] (07-26-2015 12:00 AM)JRsec Wrote: [ -> ]1. There is a report tonight, that I have yet to substantiate, that a legal team is challenging the GOR as it pertains to Public State funded Universities and whether they by the very nature may even participate in a Grant of Rights. If true then that raises a lot of issues that could result from a ruling either way. I'll be interested to see who hired this legal team if indeed it is true.
2. If it is true movement could come sooner and could come from many different fronts. The ACC could suffer losses, the Big 12 could as well, but so could any conference with Public institutions.
3. The whole process is following the pattern of Missouri's move to the SEC. So it is at least plausible. I upgrade that to likely given the activity surrounding both Oklahoma and some SEC member schools.
That's about it right now. It looks real, feels real, but has not been confirmed.
it is highly unlikely any ACC team will end up in big 12.
That wasn't the point of the post. Stay with the thread when making comments. The premise is that the state schools may not be able to legally sign a GOR. We'll see if anything comes of this. My point is that if this did prove to be true then it would be anything goes for state schools.
This is an interesting twist.from the usual "privates get left out" ideas on here. Though I would certainly be in favor of a.Magnolia league.
JR, I don't know about the legal team you've mentioned, but it seems to me to be a long shot argument. Courts are not very receptive to the argument that a party can knowingly sign a contract and then plead that they didn't have the power to sign.
I think the GOR is solid. It's a grant of property rights, kind of like renting out your house for 10 years. You can't show up 5 years later and say "I hereby un-rent this house." I don't know of any legal theory that allows a university to 'unsell' something it sold.
Nevertheless, that doesn't mean there is no way around it. I don't know if you've seen them, but there are a series of tweets from Greg Flugaur (aka, the Dude of Minnesota) saying basically that if 5 or more teams leave the Big 12, the GOR will not stop them.
The GOR basically says that the member universities sell to the Big 12 conference whatever rights are necessary for the conference to meet its contractual obligations under the conference's agreements with ESPN and Fox. The conference members retain the right to all other events. So, if Texas is playing Kansas in Kansas, the rights to that game belong to the Big 12 conference if ESPN/Fox decide to telecast it or to Kansas (home team) if ESPN/Fox decide not to.
So what happens if the ESPN and Fox media deals with the Conference terminate for any reason? The answer is that because the Conference has no more obligations under it's media deals, the member schools get to keep the rights to all events - the GOR becomes meaningless.
There's been lots of discussion today on other boards about how 5 teams could leave the Big 12 and the GOR would not be a problem. I can easily see how that could be true.
ESPN/Fox almost certainly built into the conference media deals early termination rights to protect themselves. I don't think anyone knows the specifics because the media deals are not public. The ESPN and Fox contracts are with the conference, not the schools, so they are beyond the reach of state Freedom of Information acts.
I think posters have identified one early termination event - dissolution of the conference. Contracts typically give one party to a contract the right to terminate if the other party goes bankrupt or dissolves, so I assume ESPN/Fox would have a termination right in that event.
I can certainly see ESPN/Fox also wanting to terminate if Texas and Oklahoma left or, if todays' tweets from Greg Flugaur are correct, any combination of teams leaving that causes only 5 or fewer teams to be left in the Big 12. ESPN/Fox certainly would have also reserved the right to consent to new teams. If I am ESPN and Fox, I certainly don't want to continue paying the conference $200 million a year (or whatever it is at the time) and get the rights to a Tech/BYU game as a replacement for Texas/Tech and or a Houston/OSU instead of a OU/OSU game. I want the right to terminate the contract.
So what Flugaur is saying is not far fetched. There may well be a backdoor 'out' of the conference for Texas and Oklahoma. And that shouldn't surprise anyone. Texas certainly would have considered the possibility, when it was proposing the GOR, that it may want to leave. It would have been ironic for the GOR, which Texas wanted to tie up teams in the Big 12, to wind up being the handcuffs keeping Texas in the Big 12 if it later wanted to leave. Giving ESPN/Fox the right to terminate the conference media deal, and as a result eliminate the GOR, would have accomplished Texas goal.