Nebraska football: Akron contract shows possible wiggle room

The contract between Akron and the Nebraska football team was released by the Huskers.

Is it possible the Nebraska football team won’t have to pay Akron the money it was promised? The contract between the two teams was released by the Huskers on Monday afternoon and it appears to show there might be some room for the school to avoid a payout.

If the Cornhuskers are able to avoid paying Akron for their trip to Lincoln, it would be a heck of a blow to the Zips, who refused to play the canceled game. This was despite reports that the Huskers were working overtime to get the game in on Sunday.

That appears to be even trying to find dorm rooms the Zips’ players could use. It’s clear Nebraska has known for a while how important this game was on the schedule. It might be the game that gets the Cornhuskers to six wins.

There are two sections of the contract that stood out. Section nine laid out that the contract would be made void if the game was made impossible to play by disaster, as well as specific weather events like fire, hurricane, and other issues.

It appears to be a fairly boilerplate contract for this kind of thing, since hurricanes aren’t a worry in the middle of the country. There’s even language in there in case the government is overthrown.

Section 10 of the contract lays out that if one of the schools does not produce their team to play the scheduled game for reasons outside of section nine, they will need to pay a $1 million fee.  Why this is not the final word and instead might hint at wiggle room, is because neither section expressly fits the situation over the weekend but could.

The questions that need to be asked are “what constitutes a disaster?” Other forces of nature are laid out. That could exclude severe thunderstorms. It might also mean it’s included.

The other question is whether or not the “scheduled game” could be a game that the network and one of the teams’ agreed upon. This would mean the Sunday morning contest.

The big problem is that the Nebraska football team is in a kind of uncharted waters. While we’ve seen games canceled due to weather the last few years, they have almost all been because of a hurricane. The game was absolutely unplayable and both teams knew that was going to happen.

Iowa State had its game canceled this weekend as well but it appears there wasn’t the same kind of confusion surrounding whether the game would be played the next day. There’s enough there to think the Huskers could get out of paying Akron its money but we’re likely not going to know for a while.