ORLANDO, Fla. — UCF is reportedly negotiating a $17-20 million settlement with the American Athletic Conference to clear a path to the Knights joining the Big 12 Conference in 2023.
Cincinnati, Houston and UCF have been in negotiations with the AAC the past couple of months after all three accepted bids to join the Big 12 last September. The intent was to join the league by July 2024 at the latest, hoping to join by 2023. AAC bylaws require schools to give 27 months’ notice and pay a $10 million exit fee, but an earlier exit would mean a negotiated settlement.
According to a report by Action Network’s Brett McMurphy, that exit fee is somewhere in the “$17 million to $20 million range.” Initial reports had the AAC seeking $30-$35 million per school, which would be nearly double ($17 million) what the league received from UConn in 2019 when the school left early to rejoin the Big East.
A settlement could be reached this month, according to the report.
UCF athletics director Terry Mohajir told the Orlando Sentinel last month that the schools were still working through the negotiations, but he had hoped to have something finished by May.
“We’re getting closer to a deadline that we really need to make a decision and they are, too,” Mohajir said. “They’ve got incoming teams and we need to be collegial about this and to be sensible about this: collegial and sensible. I think [AAC commissioner] Mike Aresco is collegial about it. They’ve got to try to move their conference forward as well.”
Both sides are eager for a resolution, with the AAC looking to move on with its future. A future that involves adding six new members from Conference USA — Charlotte, FAU, North Texas, Rice, UAB and UTSA, hopefully by July 1, 2023.
The deadline for the six schools to notify CUSA of their intent to leave is 14 months, but that due date came and went on Sunday. However, according to McMurphy’s report, the schools requested and received a one-month extension.
“There are a lot of notice periods with everybody involved and you’ve got probably five or six conferences that are affected by all this,” Aresco told the Sentinel in January. “So, it behooves us to try — if those schools want to leave early — to get something worked out.”
