Most contracts can be broken, BUT if you break a contract then you must pay damages to the other party of the contract to make them whole. The Exit Fee is an attempt to quantify beforehand what those damages would be. In legal terms, this is what is called liquidated damages. The main constraint on liquidated damages clauses in contracts is that they must be a reasonable approximation of what the actual damages would be.

The Grant of Rights is something different, and it may not be as big of an obstacle to schools leaving as some have speculated. A GoR is where the schools in the conference have transferred their broadcast rights for their home games to the conference in exchange for a share of the conference media rights money. If a school leaves before the GoR term is over, then those rights stay with the conference, BUT the school may still be entitled to the share of conference revenue from those media rights even though they are no longer in the conference.

So let's use the Texas to the SEC as a hypothetical example. Let's say that Texas leaves next year, 3 years before the GoR is up. The Big 12 may get to keep the rights money from broadcasters to broadcast Texas's home games, even though they are now playing against SEC opponents. So Fox and ESPN might not lower the amount they pay the Big 12 for the remainder of the contract, but Texas would probably still be entitled to their share of the media rights money the conference receives, even though they are no longer a member of the conference. And since they're not able to contribute media rights to the SEC, the SEC could just say, okay you're a member of the SEC, but you don't receive any SEC media money until 2025, because you won't be contributing any media rights to us until then. So Texas wouldn't receive much SEC money until 2025, but they would probably still be entitled to receive some Big 12 money until 2025 under this hypothetical. Texas would also owe the exit fee, (or something similar) and that exit fee could just be taken out of their Big 12 distributions. So worst case scenario, Texas will have to fund their athletics programs themselves for a couple years. Texas probably has enough money to swing that.

[Post edited by tarheelblue at 08/08/2021 4:45PM]