(02-15-2022 04:39 PM)MattBrownEP Wrote:  I'm taking at least partial credit for this lol

I'm happy for UIC and Horizon league athletes, and hope that other leagues will follow suit. The circumstances that made these bylaws make sense in 2011 and 2013 no longer apply....enforcing them doesn't help athletes OR conferences. It just creates bad blood for no reason.

Gregg Doyel from the Indy Star was whining about how childish UIC was nut got their way.

(02-16-2022 10:39 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(02-16-2022 10:24 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  About the first part of the bold, I have mixed feelings. While I generally think schools should be free to move from conference to conference without onerous anchors (like GORs and exit fees, eg), a leave does put a conference in a tough scheduling position. So IMO, a reasonable period of notice is reasonable, and valid to enforce. In contrast to long notices like the old Big East's 27-month notice, which IMO was unreasonable, a one-year notice like the HL had is IMO very reasonable.

Well, in practice notice periods have been found to be unenforceable, whether reasonable or not. So the best a conference can do is attach a financial penalty to leaving-on-short-notice, over and above the standard exit fees.

If CUSA had that kind of foresight, Marshall and Southern Miss and ODU could have made that decision in December, based on how big a check they would have to cut to CUSA vs how badly they want out ASAP.

Quote:Also, I do not think there has been some big sea-change in public attitudes about this over the past eight years. I don't think the public cares one way or the other, in 2013 or now, about the moral correctness of denying a school and its athletes participation in conferences championships.

True. If you were so inclined, you could pull columns from 10-15 years ago when teams were leaving for the A-10 or wherever, search-and-replace the names and the columns read the same as they would today.

Quote:For my part, even now I don't think this deprivation is a big deal. So a school's hoops or hockey team can't play in a Horizon League title tournament? WoW! Terrible! First World Problem, IMO.

Sure, but the whole endeavor of college athletics is like that. Tournament bans pull back the curtain just a little bit too much about how much of this is just grown men (and women) being petty.

Tournament bans undermine (slightly) the argument for exit fees being valid at all. They're evidence that exit fees and notice periods aren't about making whole the schools left behind, they're about the schools left behind being petty. Exit fees are, legally, supposed to be about compensating the left-behind schools for the diminished value of the conference. Are they really? Hard to say. But conferences banning schools from their tournaments for leaving doesn't do anything to make the left-behind schools whole. It's evidence that it's all about exit PENALTIES--which are a no-no in court.

Well, I think one could argue that they are meant to be deterrents to breaking the bylaw. And the only way the deterrent has teeth is if it is enforced ex-post.

(02-16-2022 11:59 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(02-16-2022 10:39 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(02-16-2022 10:24 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  About the first part of the bold, I have mixed feelings. While I generally think schools should be free to move from conference to conference without onerous anchors (like GORs and exit fees, eg), a leave does put a conference in a tough scheduling position. So IMO, a reasonable period of notice is reasonable, and valid to enforce. In contrast to long notices like the old Big East's 27-month notice, which IMO was unreasonable, a one-year notice like the HL had is IMO very reasonable.

Well, in practice notice periods have been found to be unenforceable, whether reasonable or not. So the best a conference can do is attach a financial penalty to leaving-on-short-notice, over and above the standard exit fees.

If CUSA had that kind of foresight, Marshall and Southern Miss and ODU could have made that decision in December, based on how big a check they would have to cut to CUSA vs how badly they want out ASAP.

Quote:Also, I do not think there has been some big sea-change in public attitudes about this over the past eight years. I don't think the public cares one way or the other, in 2013 or now, about the moral correctness of denying a school and its athletes participation in conferences championships.

True. If you were so inclined, you could pull columns from 10-15 years ago when teams were leaving for the A-10 or wherever, search-and-replace the names and the columns read the same as they would today.

Quote:For my part, even now I don't think this deprivation is a big deal. So a school's hoops or hockey team can't play in a Horizon League title tournament? WoW! Terrible! First World Problem, IMO.

Sure, but the whole endeavor of college athletics is like that. Tournament bans pull back the curtain just a little bit too much about how much of this is just grown men (and women) being petty.

Tournament bans undermine (slightly) the argument for exit fees being valid at all. They're evidence that exit fees and notice periods aren't about making whole the schools left behind, they're about the schools left behind being petty. Exit fees are, legally, supposed to be about compensating the left-behind schools for the diminished value of the conference. Are they really? Hard to say. But conferences banning schools from their tournaments for leaving doesn't do anything to make the left-behind schools whole. It's evidence that it's all about exit PENALTIES--which are a no-no in court.

Well, I think one could argue that they are meant to be deterrents to breaking the bylaw. And the only way the deterrent has teeth is if it is enforced ex-post.

thats an exit penalty, and you apparently can't do thst.

(02-16-2022 12:05 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(02-16-2022 11:59 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(02-16-2022 10:39 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(02-16-2022 10:24 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  About the first part of the bold, I have mixed feelings. While I generally think schools should be free to move from conference to conference without onerous anchors (like GORs and exit fees, eg), a leave does put a conference in a tough scheduling position. So IMO, a reasonable period of notice is reasonable, and valid to enforce. In contrast to long notices like the old Big East's 27-month notice, which IMO was unreasonable, a one-year notice like the HL had is IMO very reasonable.

Well, in practice notice periods have been found to be unenforceable, whether reasonable or not. So the best a conference can do is attach a financial penalty to leaving-on-short-notice, over and above the standard exit fees.

If CUSA had that kind of foresight, Marshall and Southern Miss and ODU could have made that decision in December, based on how big a check they would have to cut to CUSA vs how badly they want out ASAP.

Quote:Also, I do not think there has been some big sea-change in public attitudes about this over the past eight years. I don't think the public cares one way or the other, in 2013 or now, about the moral correctness of denying a school and its athletes participation in conferences championships.

True. If you were so inclined, you could pull columns from 10-15 years ago when teams were leaving for the A-10 or wherever, search-and-replace the names and the columns read the same as they would today.

Quote:For my part, even now I don't think this deprivation is a big deal. So a school's hoops or hockey team can't play in a Horizon League title tournament? WoW! Terrible! First World Problem, IMO.

Sure, but the whole endeavor of college athletics is like that. Tournament bans pull back the curtain just a little bit too much about how much of this is just grown men (and women) being petty.

Tournament bans undermine (slightly) the argument for exit fees being valid at all. They're evidence that exit fees and notice periods aren't about making whole the schools left behind, they're about the schools left behind being petty. Exit fees are, legally, supposed to be about compensating the left-behind schools for the diminished value of the conference. Are they really? Hard to say. But conferences banning schools from their tournaments for leaving doesn't do anything to make the left-behind schools whole. It's evidence that it's all about exit PENALTIES--which are a no-no in court.

Well, I think one could argue that they are meant to be deterrents to breaking the bylaw. And the only way the deterrent has teeth is if it is enforced ex-post.

thats an exit penalty, and you apparently can't do thst.

I didn't realize that. I mean, wasn't the ACC able to keep about $30m in Maryland payouts when they left for the B1G? Wasn't that an 'exit penalty'?

You seem to be making a distinction between financial penalties and other kinds? I'm not sure why a court would think hitting a leaving member with a $5m exit 'fee' (penalty, IMO) is fine, but banning their teams from a tournament is not? Sure, you can say "well the money compensates the conference for the inconvenience", but surely that exit fee is a "deterrent" to schools leaving to begin with, just as the tournament ban is. If I was a judge (LOL) I think I would see these as a distinction without a difference.

And heck, the former seems a lot more onerous than the latter.

I mean, I think if the Big 12 told Texas last September they could pay an $80m exit fee and be free and clear to join the SEC for Fall 2022, OR they could accept a ban on all Texas teams competing for Big 12 titles in the fall (including football) and spring of 2022, I think Texas would have taken the latter before I could pull the thumb out of my mouth, LOL.

Not a facetious question, I really don't know.

(02-16-2022 02:01 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(02-16-2022 12:05 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(02-16-2022 11:59 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(02-16-2022 10:39 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(02-16-2022 10:24 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  About the first part of the bold, I have mixed feelings. While I generally think schools should be free to move from conference to conference without onerous anchors (like GORs and exit fees, eg), a leave does put a conference in a tough scheduling position. So IMO, a reasonable period of notice is reasonable, and valid to enforce. In contrast to long notices like the old Big East's 27-month notice, which IMO was unreasonable, a one-year notice like the HL had is IMO very reasonable.

Well, in practice notice periods have been found to be unenforceable, whether reasonable or not. So the best a conference can do is attach a financial penalty to leaving-on-short-notice, over and above the standard exit fees.

If CUSA had that kind of foresight, Marshall and Southern Miss and ODU could have made that decision in December, based on how big a check they would have to cut to CUSA vs how badly they want out ASAP.

Quote:Also, I do not think there has been some big sea-change in public attitudes about this over the past eight years. I don't think the public cares one way or the other, in 2013 or now, about the moral correctness of denying a school and its athletes participation in conferences championships.

True. If you were so inclined, you could pull columns from 10-15 years ago when teams were leaving for the A-10 or wherever, search-and-replace the names and the columns read the same as they would today.

Quote:For my part, even now I don't think this deprivation is a big deal. So a school's hoops or hockey team can't play in a Horizon League title tournament? WoW! Terrible! First World Problem, IMO.

Sure, but the whole endeavor of college athletics is like that. Tournament bans pull back the curtain just a little bit too much about how much of this is just grown men (and women) being petty.

Tournament bans undermine (slightly) the argument for exit fees being valid at all. They're evidence that exit fees and notice periods aren't about making whole the schools left behind, they're about the schools left behind being petty. Exit fees are, legally, supposed to be about compensating the left-behind schools for the diminished value of the conference. Are they really? Hard to say. But conferences banning schools from their tournaments for leaving doesn't do anything to make the left-behind schools whole. It's evidence that it's all about exit PENALTIES--which are a no-no in court.

Well, I think one could argue that they are meant to be deterrents to breaking the bylaw. And the only way the deterrent has teeth is if it is enforced ex-post.

thats an exit penalty, and you apparently can't do thst.

I didn't realize that. I mean, wasn't the ACC able to keep about $30m in Maryland payouts when they left for the B1G? Wasn't that an 'exit penalty'?

if a judge asks, that $30M is damages for Maryland leaving, not an exit penalty nosirreebob swear-to-god honest injun.

Quote:u seem to be making a distinction between financial penalties and other kinds?

between compensation and penalties. I guess stuff like sceduling guarantees counts as compensation.

Quote:I'm not sure why a court would think hitting a leaving member with a $5m exit 'fee' (penalty, IMO) is fine,

if the judge rules that the $5M is a penalty, then it's game over. the judge in the BC vs Big East case (if i remember right) knocked down the mew $5M exit fee for BC because it hadn't been properly passed. he commented that he was leaving the $1M fee because BC hadn't challenged it.

there had been a strung if Big East quotes about how the exit fee would stop teams from leaving. judge dudnt like that.

since then, bylaws have had a clause that exit fees are agreed to be liquidated damages and not a penalty.

one argument i see for "x years distributions" instead of $X million is that you can say that the liquidated damages are tied to the conference value.

Quote:ut banning their teams from a tournament is not? Sure, you can say "well the money compensates the conference for the inconvenience", but surely that exit fee is a "deterrent" to schools leaving to begin with, just as the tournament ban is. If I was a judge (LOL) I think I would see these as a distinction without a difference.

I think that's part of the reason that everyone tries to keep these cases out of court.

[/quote]

And heck, the former seems a lot more onerous than the latter.

I mean, I think if the Big 12 told Texas last September they could pay an $80m exit fee and be free and clear to join the SEC for Fall 2022, OR they could accept a ban on all Texas teams competing for Big 12 titles in the fall (including football) and spring of 2022, I think Texas would have taken the latter before I could pull the thumb out of my mouth, LOL.

Not a facetious question, I really don't know.
[/quote]

two quick notes....

1) Respectfully, I'd say that at the mid major level, not being able to play in a conference tournament is a huge deal. Remember not all of these tournaments are in early march. For swimmers at at UIC and SBU, they found out like, six days before the championship. Their regular season was over. That means the seniors found out their college career was over from a phone call...that's a pretty huge emotional disappointment. It's also worth remembering that few of those teams are going to get at large bids for even an NIT, so conference postseason access means NCAA access. Even if you're only a .500 team, that tournament is what you've been building every single workout, every 4:00 AM wakeup for...for months. When I talked to the athletes, THEY thought it was a huge deal.

2) I'm told that postseason bans and exit fees would stand up in court, but they have to be proportional. If the America East set say, a 40 million exit fee, even if everybody signed it, courts wouldn't rule it enforceable. The Big 12, with their TV rights, COULD do that.

I talked with the Horizon commish a bit about what other, non-exit fee levers might be possible for leagues in today's newsletter.

(02-17-2022 08:57 AM)MattBrownEP Wrote:  two quick notes....

1) Respectfully, I'd say that at the mid major level, not being able to play in a conference tournament is a huge deal. Remember not all of these tournaments are in early march. For swimmers at at UIC and SBU, they found out like, six days before the championship. Their regular season was over. That means the seniors found out their college career was over from a phone call...that's a pretty huge emotional disappointment. It's also worth remembering that few of those teams are going to get at large bids for even an NIT, so conference postseason access means NCAA access. Even if you're only a .500 team, that tournament is what you've been building every single workout, every 4:00 AM wakeup for...for months. When I talked to the athletes, THEY thought it was a huge deal.

2) I'm told that postseason bans and exit fees would stand up in court, but they have to be proportional. If the America East set say, a 40 million exit fee, even if everybody signed it, courts wouldn't rule it enforceable. The Big 12, with their TV rights, COULD do that.

I talked with the Horizon commish a bit about what other, non-exit fee levers might be possible for leagues in today's newsletter.

Point #2 is big with regard to C-USA I think.

As far as what conferences could do- I think taking away conference championship hosting duties would be by far the #1 thing. That would make all the sense in the world.

Why don’t the conferences put more emphasis on monetary fine? So there is the exit fee. And there’s post season ban. Lift the ban if the school pays double exit fee. Then the school will be held accountable. At mid major level, that makes sense. May be AE exit fee is $1m. Make Stony Brook pay $2m if we don’t want the post season ban. The conference keeps any tourney unit money anyway. And if we really wanna move to CAA, extra $1m is not going to stop us. What is AE achieving besides hurting athletes? Stony Brook University is not getting hurt by the ban… only the athletes.

I wonder if conferences that take on new member schools have a provision that says they must remain in their new digs for a minimum amount of time before leaving without penalty? I think they need to be more concise about what the penalties are, financially speaking, without any post-season bans for wanting to go to a newer home.

I get what quo vadis is saying with regard to UIC's situation and how ironic it was that the school who proposed the penalties for early departure from the Horizon League ended up being the one griping about the rule itself. I agree that the proposed changes were brought up by different people in the UIC administration several years ago, and those people are no longer at the college. However, if it were a big deal to the current administrators, you would think they would have proffered changes to the rule before UIC or some other conference member felt its wrath.

As for the Horizon itself, I understand its frustration over all this. The stature of the league, as mentioned in another thread, sure has taken a hit. Successful schools have left and have not been replaced by schools that were anywhere close to those levels of accomplishment. Butler and Valpo leave, then Oakland and Northern Kentucky come in. NKU has been a decent add for the Horizon, but Oakland has not been as successful here as it was in the Summit League. Purdue Ft. Wayne and Robert Morris have yet to distinguish themselves. Loyola Chicago was seen (by me, anyway) as a mediocre team in Horizon League basketball circles, and the Ramblers had some early struggles in the Missouri Valley, but once they got their footing, they became a force in the MVC and have had more success here than they ever seemed to have in the HL. Maybe UIC is thinking it can build itself into a more competitive outfit in a new conference, just like Loyola did. It's going to be interesting to watch the Missouri Valley next year. Current schools will find out how tough Murray State and Belmont are going to be to play, and conversely, MSU and BU will find out how it may be more difficult to win in the MVC.

Finally, I read about UIC's response to the Horizon League's post-season ban (now rescinded), and I'm sort of bothered by the claim that UIC administrators released contact information or encouraged students/fans to pester administrators from other schools about the decision rendered against the Flames. I didn't think it was fair to enforce the post-season ban rule against UIC teams, but I really can't stand the fact that for as wonderful as the internet is, there is way too much cyber bullying that is allowed to take place. Calling someone every name in the book and threatening physical violence against people and their families has no place in any society, and I think it's naive for people to think it doesn't happen or that it's no big deal. If you want to engage in a conversation and discuss an issue of redress and do so respectfully, you might not come to an agreement, but you can at least be polite (and still firm) about your argument. Good manners was on the wane in the U.S. before a majority of people latched onto social media. Being technologically connected, in many ways, has made it worse.

(02-17-2022 08:57 AM)MattBrownEP Wrote:  two quick notes....

1) Respectfully, I'd say that at the mid major level, not being able to play in a conference tournament is a huge deal. Remember not all of these tournaments are in early march. For swimmers at at UIC and SBU, they found out like, six days before the championship. Their regular season was over. That means the seniors found out their college career was over from a phone call...that's a pretty huge emotional disappointment. It's also worth remembering that few of those teams are going to get at large bids for even an NIT, so conference postseason access means NCAA access. Even if you're only a .500 team, that tournament is what you've been building every single workout, every 4:00 AM wakeup for...for months. When I talked to the athletes, THEY thought it was a huge deal.

2) I'm told that postseason bans and exit fees would stand up in court, but they have to be proportional. If the America East set say, a 40 million exit fee, even if everybody signed it, courts wouldn't rule it enforceable. The Big 12, with their TV rights, COULD do that.

I talked with the Horizon commish a bit about what other, non-exit fee levers might be possible for leagues in today's newsletter.

It seems that there are several problems.

(1) Continuous seasons make it almost impossible to choose a best time to leave. If there were a transfer portal, it would have to be in the summer.

(2) All-sports conferences. Among the 5 minor DI conferences in the Midwest: Summit, MVC, OVC, MAC, and Horizon, there are only 20 swimming schools. Only 8 B1G schools sponsor swimming, and in Big 12, only 5, but only Cincinnati and West Virginia in the Midwest. You could do just as well with one or two single-sport conferences.

The MVC doesn't sponsor swimming, so UIC is probably going to have affiliate with the MAC.

(3) Schools pay a small amount to be part of a conference. Most of their expenditures are for the teams that play in the conference. The conferences distribute money to the schools.

So a possible solution:

Schools pay a deposit for the current season and the next season for a sport. If UIC had paid its deposit for swimming, then it would have been the Horizon who breached the contract when the Horizon blocked UIC from competing. At the end of the season, UIC would have the choice of rolling their deposit over, or getting it back and agreeing to one more season in swimming competition.

If there was rational leagues, UIC might simply have maintained their swimming in a Midwest Swimming Conference: UIC, Western Illinois, Eastern Illinois, Southern Illinois, Green Bay, St.Thomas (MN), Missouri State, St. Louis, South Dakota, South Dakota State, Omaha, Denver.

The Great Lakes Swimming Conference: Valpo, IUPUI, Evansville, Ball State, Oakland, Detroit Mercy, Cleveland State, Youngstown State, Miami (OH), Cincinnati, and West Virginia.