re: Lost in all this - Is Ole Miss that poor? (The Princewill situation)

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I don’t think OP understands conduct precedent. If you waive the penalties for these contracts you will have a problem enforcing them in the future. If you can’t enforce terms then the terms are useless.

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I'm just interested to see if schools can actually bind a player, without paying him any money. If that happened in this case. It will be interesting for sure, with the revenue share landscape being so new.

This is how adults think...why don't more get this. Every team in the NIL era should be doing the same thing.

They are grown men making millions of dollars. They signed a contract, they should be held accountable for honoring it or paying the damages. That's how the real world works.

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They are grown men making millions of dollars. They signed a contract, they should be held accountable for honoring it or paying the damages. That's how the real world works.

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What are the damages though?

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I'm just interested to see if schools can actually bind a player, without paying him any money.

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Not sure. Clearly OM and their legal advisors believe so. I imagine LSU GM would have a hard time refuting given these were probably substantially similar contracts he was operating with while at OM. I assume it has alot to due with pledged/promised vs actually distributed. Not sure when it was due to be dispensed. A person of legal age signed a contract agreeing to stated terms and likely wouldnt be able to fight on grounds of not understanding contents if he had advising agents involved.

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I'm just interested to see if schools can actually bind a player, without paying him any money.

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I’m gonna regret this, because you really want to just argue instead of getting answers. But I’ll try to help you out.

Yes, contracts like this are binding. They are “executory contracts,” meaning that the payments will be made over the life of the contract. That promise to pay is adequate consideration. No signing bonus or prepayment is required to give the contract force. As far as I know PWill isn’t claiming any lack of consideration, or failure by Ole Miss to honor its obligations. He just decided to breach the contract and go elsewhere.

And to your other question, yes, there were damages. Ole Miss had allocated $550k of its limited rev share fund to PW, and when he announced he was breaching it at the end of the portal window, it was difficult or impossible to find similarly talented players to fill the position PW was vacating, and to reallocate those rev share funds to the replacements. There are other damages of course.

In situations like that, contracting parties often will pretermit any squabbling about the amount of damages for breach, by agreeing in advance on an amount of liquidated damages. That’s what they did here.

Liquidated damages clauses are upheld all the time, and provide valuable certainty to all parties. If a party is contemplating a breach, he knows up front what it will cost him in liquidated damages.

The buyout clause in these player contracts are really no different than coaches buyouts, except those are much larger in amount and duration. Buyouts are routinely honored; defenses are limited. And almost always, the transferree school pays the buyout to the transferor school (just like LSU paid Kiffin’s buyout obligation to Ole Miss).

My question is why LSU is leaving PWill twisting in the wind by himself, instead of covering his buyout. Everyone knew Ole Miss wasn’t waiving its buyout; OM sent them all demand letters immediately after hearing of his plans to transfer. I’d be shocked if his agents didn’t get a commitment from LSU to cover the buyout (and if the agent didn’t do this, he is probably liable to PWill for malpractice).

OM tried to resolve this amicably all through the spring. No response. So now PWill is gonna get to pay the buyout plus OM’s legal fees. Stupid.