Myth of the Big 12's Grant of rights
By Jason Hutzler
A grant of rights is a contract between each individual school and the conference pledging the school's media rights to conference for a number of year. Like all contracts, it can be broken. School X, member of Conference A who has granted its media rights to Conference A, thinks it can make more money in Conference B. So School X leaves Conference A for Conference B placing its media rights in Conference B. Now School X's games will be distributed by both confernces. At this point School X has breached the grant of rights agreement, Conference A will sue School X over the media rights under the grant of rights agreement.
Conference A would love to force School X to leave its media rights with Conference A, requesting a court require specific performance of the grant of rights. This is the threat of the grant of rights, the tie that binds so to speak. If a court were to elect the specific performance remedy then School X of course provides no value to Conference B. However, because specific performance is often difficult to enforce and requires more of the court's resources most courts rarely ever use this remedy.
Courts are even less inclined to use it when there is an easy way to calculate damages. The resulting damages from a breach of grant of rights are easily calculable. There is no reason to believe that a court would require specific performance in a suit over a breach of a grant of rights.