(01-25-2020 01:01 PM)B easy Wrote:  

(01-25-2020 09:36 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(01-25-2020 02:11 AM)Sactowndog Wrote:  The MWC Presidents ended the deal because the value didn’t happen as anticipated. They gave additional revenue on the assumption Boise would replace the lost revenue with Access Bowl dollars. Those never materialized. Boise made the Access bowl earlier and hasn’t been back in quite some time.

They should have thought about that possibility before signing a deal with Boise that guarantees them that bonus in perpetuity.

Wouldn't the rule against perpetuities apply?

"No interest is good unless it must vest, if at all, not later than twenty-one years after some life in being at the creation of the interest."

— John Chipman Gray, Rule Against Perpetuities § 201.[2]

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1113497?seq=1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_against_perpetuities

Looking at that wikipedia page, that's something involving wills. So, if it remotely applies, I suppose the Boise State TV veto clause would expire 21 years after the deaths of Craig "Hair" Thompson and Bob Kustra.

Ooh, and a couple of wikipedia paragraphs later, it's been abolished in Idaho, but enacted in Colorado.

But seriously I don't think that applies.

The provision looks to be perpetual until:
Case 1. Boise State and the Mountain West mutually agree to void and replace it (This would include Boise State leaving the MWC, under the MWC exit bylaws)

Case 2. Mountain West breaches the contract, voiding it, which would return Boise STate's home football television rights to Boise State.

Case 3. Boise State somehow breaching the contract--I can't think of an example of what Boise could plausibly or implausibly do to void the contract, but if they did, I guess the contract voids, Boise State gets their home TV rights back, and Boise probably owes the Mountain West monetary damages for whatever they did to breach the contract.

This is much less like trying to put permanent conditions on a bequest in a will ("No heir to this property will marry a godforsaken ginger") and more like the deal the owners of the Spirits of St Louis made when the NBA absorbed the ABA. The Spirits' owners sold their franchise to the NBA for a share of NBA TV revenue, and cashed checks until 2015 when the NBA finally bought them out for a huge lump sum.