Contractual Implications of the Other Brawl: With all of the focus on the Pistons-Pacers melee over the weekend, few people are talking about another ugly sports fight, this once occurring on the field between the Clemson and South Carolina football teams. A player fight escalated into a ten-minute brawl, with police having to come onto the field to break it up.



The teams have responded with a swift and definitive punishment: neither team will play in a bowl game. I think this is a great statement for the schools to make: if you embarrass the school, you will not represent the school in a prized bowl game. This is a tough punishment, especially for the seniors whose college careers are now over, but it sends a clear message and, in my opinion, sets a good precedent for college football.



What of the bowls involved, however? Both teams were bowl-eligible at 6-5. South Carolina was headed to either the Peach, Independence or Music City bowls, and is forfeiting an estimated $1 million by not attending. Clemson was expected to attend the MPC Computers or the Continental Tire bowls. Now, bowls with contractual ties to the ACC and SEC may be left scrambling to find teams that are bowl-eligible (a team must have 6 wins to play in a bowl). The LA Times's Chris Dufresne noted that there may not be enough bowl-eligible teams for the increasing number of bowl games across the country. Thus, a few bowls could be left out if there are no more 6-win teams.



In this case, could the empty bowls bring a breach of contract suit against Clemson and South Carolina? Both are bowl-eligible and by declining their bids, the bowls with contractual ties to their conferences may be forced to accept lower-ranked, and thus, less lucrative teams. The ACC has agreements with seven bowls and Clemson would have been the seventh bowl-eligible team; now one ACC bowl will be left picking up a team like Troy (7-4), Northern Illinois (8-3) or Akron (6-5). Nothing against those teams, but they are not the draw that Clemson is. Without South Carolina, the SEC will have at most seven teams for eight bowl slots, and could be left with only six should Arkansas lose to LSU this weekend. Thus, one or two SEC bowls will be replacing the huge southern alumni base of the Gamecocks with a Marshall (6-5) or North Texas (7-4). Most definitely, there will be a loss of income for these bowl games.



So, could there be liability for breach of contract? It depends on the nature of the agreements between the conferences, the schools and the bowls. Obviously, a conference cannot be held liable if its teams all stink, and thus, are not bowl-eligible because they do not win six games. But I am not certain what the contracts state about eligible teams refusing to play. One can imagine it would be included, lest every team from a conference refuse to play in a bowl during some kind of mass-protest. This is not the situation this year, but with the shortage of bowl-eligible teams, the loss of two lucrative schools could be the start of a legal battle.

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