The Big East Conference announced last month that it was dropping its lawsuit against Texas Christian University in exchange for TCU remitting a $5 million buyout.
The settlement ends an up-and-down two-year period between TCU and the conference. In November 2010, the football-rich school announced with much fanfare that it would join the Big East, which has been known as a powerhouse basketball conference
However, In October 2011, TCU changed its mind and accepted an invitation to the Big 12 conference this summer.
The Big East sued in June, claiming TCU failed to pay the conference an agreed-upon $5 million exit fee.
“TCU has fully discharged its obligations to the Big East and the lawsuit is amicably settled without admission of liability of any party,” according to a statement from the Big East.
The TCU settlement followed a settlement with the University of West Virginia, which agreed to pay $20 million, as well as Syracuse and Pittsburgh, which each agreed to pay the Big East $7.5 million. All three schools left the Big East for another conference.
Pittsburgh had initially agreed to abide by the 27-month waiting period required by Big East bylaws for a team departing the conference, which would have kept the Panthers in the league until July 1, 2014. However, the school changed its tune in May, filing suit against the Big East after the conference waived the waiting period involving West Virginia after agreeing to the aforementioned departure fee.
“It was time to move forward,” Pittsburgh athletic director Steve Pederson told CBSSports.com. The buyout “was reasonable. There’s a point everyone’s ready to move forward. We wanted to bring closure to this.”
Pittsburgh was determined to leave, according to attorney Thomas Holt of K&L Gates of Boston, who served as outside counsel for the school
“From the beginning, I was persuaded that you just can’t order a college football team to play in a schedule in a conference against its will,” Holt told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
“That’s what the Big East was looking for. Once everybody realized that, that’s when the settlement picked up steam.
“I believe the Big East came to the realization it was not going to be able to force the Mountaineers to play a football schedule against its will. When that sunk in, a settlement was a foregone conclusion.”
Holt’s motion to dismiss, filed last winter after Big East sued to keep the school in the conference, can be viewed here: http://wvgazette.com/static/WVUlawsuit.pdf
