Report: Rutgers Suing Big East Over $10 Million Exit Fee, 27-Month Waiting Period

The realignment of many college sports conferences has left the Big East a bit worse for wear.

Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Texas Christian University, West Virginia, Louisville and Rutgers have all either withdrawn from the league or will be doing so in the near future and one school isn’t pleased with the league’s departure policy.

Rutgers is set to move to the Big Ten but the school is still quarreling with the conference over the $10 million exit fee and 27-month waiting period. According to ESPN New York, the Piscataway, N.J. university is suing the conference on the grounds that the fee “arbitrarily applies to some, but not all, of the Big East football schools, and the effect is to penalize certain members if they seek to withdraw.”

Rutgers points to the cases of Syracuse, Pitt, TCU and West Virginia from the summer as situations where schools have been allowed to leave the conference early and that the conference has yet to collect $39.5 million in exit fees from those schools. Both the school and the conference have declined comment, not wanting to comment on pending litigation.

Rutgers announced its intention to swap conferences on Nov. 20. Fellow Big Ten-bound school Maryland is being sued by the ACC with the conference targeting $53 million in exit fees in that case.

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