It’s official! The Board of Trustees has voted and UConn has signed the contract to join the Big East. I’ve done a quick initial perusal of the agreement, and here are the highlights:
UConn will pay $3.5M to join the Big East. The university will not be entitled to any tournament shares earned by other Big East teams before UConn’s entry, but UConn keeps its own shares (currently a lone 2016 share) from prior to joining the Big East (unless UConn has to sign them over to the AAC as part of the severance agreement, a distinct possibility).
The buyout is HUGE. In fact, it’s much higher than the exit fees teams currently in the league would have to pay to leave, and the reason is easy to guess: football. Check out this language:
The University acknowledges and agrees that its application to become a member of the Conference presents unique issues and risks for the Conference because, among other things, it maintains a Division I, FBS football program; such program could, as it has in the past, create a misalignment of interests with the other Members, who founded the Conference to maintain stability and a focus on sports other than football; and that a future withdrawal by the University, whether to realign its football program with the basketball and other programs it is moving into the Conference or otherwise, could cause unique harm and substantial damage to the Conference, the amount of which cannot be calculated with precision. The University and the Conference have therefore agreed, as a fundamental and material condition to the Conference’s acceptance of the University’s application to become a member of the Conference, that the University will agree to a greater withdrawal fee than currently applicable to the other members…
So basically the fear is that UConn will jump ship again, but to a P5 so it has a home for football, and if it does, UConn will have to pay through the nose: $30M if it departs within the first six years, $15M for years seven through nine, and $10M at year 10 and after.
UConn is specifically prohibited from talking to any conference about joining between now and when it officially enters the Big East. However, the Huskies are allowed to talk to non-P5 schools about parking our football team. Obviously the Big East does not want UConn to get involved with a P5 for any reason, so it can talk to the MAC or CUSA or whoever, but can’t holler at the ACC, B1G, Big 12, Pac-12 or the SEC about anything.
Things we don’t know: what the AAC exit fee is going to be. The contract names the 27 months and $10M exit fee, but that’s just a restatement of the AAC contract. The Big East contract also includes this language:
The University … intends to exercise its right of withdrawal in accordance with the terms of the AAC’s governing documents or on such terms as may otherwise be agreed to by the AAC and the University. (emphasis mine)
So UConn’s going to do what it’s got to do to get out of the AAC, but it’s not spelled out what that will be, likely because we don’t actually know yet what that will look like. The Big East contract also says UConn is on its own for getting out of the American. UConn alone will be on the hook for those exit fees.
And the thing we all care most about, TV stuff. The contract says UConn will abide by the same rules as the current members, giving the Big East the sole rights to sell UConn’s TV rights (radio is the Huskies’ to do with as they please, so the local ESPN radio deal is safe). However! There’s this handy little clause in there:
The Conference will exclusively represent each of the Members with respect to the sale, licensing, distribution and other exploitation of the Media Rights and all matters related thereto, except, in each case, to the extent that the rules of the Conference expressly permit the Member to retain for itself or to the extent the Board votes to return other rights to the Members or to grant any other person or entity a license to exploit certain specified Media Rights; (emphasis mine)
So this leaves room for two things: the Big East giving UConn back the rights to content not picked up by FOX Sports, which currently owns the Big East TV package (essentially Tier 3 rights) OR the right for the conference to make a deal with another entity (SNY, for example, wink wink) to show content that isn’t picked up by FOX Sports. We know that cutting out SNY was a huge sticking point for UConn with the AAC TV deal, so it makes sense that UConn would make sure that all the basketball games (not a ton of Big East women’s hoops games make it to air on the FOX Sports channels) would be shown on actual TV sets in Connecticut.
Also, there is no Grant of Rights, meaning that the Big East is only entitled to UConn’s media rights while UConn is in the conference. If, by some miracle, a P5 comes-a-callin’, UConn can leave and take its media rights with it. A pretty reasonable trade-off considering UConn would be leaving the Big East with its first born child, basically.
So that’s the big stuff from the Big East deal. And now it’s time to celebrate while we await the official announcement tomorrow at Gampel South.
