In Reply to: Madden may be in some hot water tho. posted by Pyperkub on April 22, 2025 at 16:47:35
The ESPN article linked somewhere on the board, said that Arkansas was looking to recoup what they'd paid Madden. A buy-out that is written into the NIL agreement, is presumably a much bigger amount of money. Good on Arkansas for going after the buy-out.
The advocates for the athletes have wanted them to be treated like adults. This is what happens for adults - they honor their contracts or the pay for the breach.
I sure hope whomever is doing these deals for UCLA (and those who are doing the deals of non-affiliated third parties) are putting buy-out clauses in the agreements. I mean, you ought to be able to recover for a breach, even w/o a buyout clause. A breach is a breach. But the buyout clause spells it out, makes everything cleaner, puts the other party on notice that you intend to the rights arising from the contract.
Next step, multi-year contracts so that portal-transfers that occur at the end of the season are also covered. That will put a big wet blanket on the NIL/Portal circus. It's one thing to decide to pay a guy more money than the other guy is paying. It's a whole nother deal to decide to pay more than the other guy is paying .... and to pay the other guy on, top of it.
Wonder if the UCLA athletic department considered that they are going to have to pay the Arkansas athletic department a chunk of money, and if Arky is getting their money, surely Tenn will go after theirs, too. If that happens, does UCLA seek compensation for Aguilar? Does Aguilar's arrival somewhat offset the damages for Nico? Surely Aguilar's camp and maybe Tennessee would argue that Aguilar's departure was forced, by UCLA bringing in the Iamaleava's - so, Aguilar did not breach the contract by leaving. I mean, if a judge can find that a school cannot suspend a player for having a rape charge, because the player has a property right to play basketball at that school (crazy), then anything is possible.
Could get interesting. But, as per normal, we'll probably never know the private negotiations between the various parties.