quote:
OU signed a GOR that lasts until 2025. That means that whatever conference took OU wouldn't own its media rights. OU could try to buy those rights back, but at $20 million a year on average for ten more years (including this calendar year) the cost for OU to leave the Big 12 right now would be $200 million dollars.

Even if the settled for half of that, so $100 million, it will still be way too huge for OU to afford. They are stuck. They should have made better decisions years ago.

A good team of lawyers will find loopholes in a contract like that.

Such as, Texas hoarding all the money from its television contract and not wanting to go forward with a Big 12 network when given the opportunity.

The thing OU has on its side is the arrogance of Texas.

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Posted by Hawgeye

tFlagship Brothel

Member since Jun 2009

31102 posts

Posted on 5/10/16 at 11:04 am to Hawgeye

For those interested The Sports Animal mid day show just came on out of Tulsa and this is all they're talking about.

Im listening on tune in app.

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Posted by cardboardboxer

Member since Apr 2012

34346 posts

Posted on 5/10/16 at 11:05 am to Hawgeye

quote:
A good team of lawyers will find loopholes in a contract like that.

Here is the thing- the GOR contract is VERY simple. In fact it was designed to be simple to prevent the creation of loopholes. From Frank the Tank:

quote:
What’s most instructive about the GOR contract is what it doesn’t say. There isn’t a termination provision. There isn’t a liquidated damages clause. There isn’t any mechanism to calculate potential damages for a member leaving early. In fact, there isn’t any procedure at all about what would occur in the event that a member leaves the conference other than a couple of flat statements that the GOR is in effect for such member until 2025 no matter what. The Grant of Rights agreement is intentionally ambiguous.

As someone that served some hard time in the slammer of a large corporate law firm, fighting over ambiguous contracts can rack up mountains of billable hours more than virtually any other type of litigation. When you have a 200-page contract that covers every single scenario possible, that document might have been complex to draft but it’s usually a fairly straight-forward process in terms of applying it. However, when hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake, as there are in the GOR agreement, and it’s covered by a 4-page contract that is a simple grant without any termination or dispute resolution procedures, that in and of itself is a massive deterrent to anyone challenging the agreement. It’s almost impossible to determine the legal and financial exposure that a school that is contemplating leaving a GOR arrangement would have. There could be no exposure at all or it could be a large enough amount to literally bankrupt a school, and there’s very low confidence in assessing what’s more likely. In contrast, a school dealing with an exit fee understands its exposure immediately and can balance whether the worst case scenario (i.e. Maryland having to pay the full amount of its $50 million exit fee to the ACC) is still worth risking a defection over.

LINK

quote:
Such as, Texas hoarding all the money from its television contract and not wanting to go forward with a Big 12 network when given the opportunity.

There is no provisions for that in the GOR. And I don't think a judge will be sympathetic to OU because they signed the GOR already knowing Texas would have the LHN.