I remember the infamous incident where Auburn backed out of a deal with Florida State in 1999 after Terry Bowden was fired. Now, Auburn caught a lot of flack for doing that in the national media, but honestly, I can't say I wouldn't have done the same thing had I been AD. Bobby Bowden made it very clear through his statements concerning his son's departure from AU that, if the game were played, he would absolutely show the Tigers no mercy. And FSU went on to win the national title that year, so he could have put a major beatdown on Auburn had that game gone ahead. Perhaps backing out on Clemson has the same motivation, although Tommy Bowden is in less of a position to pound Auburn than the 1999 Florida State team was.
What happened with the ongoing series between LSU and Texas A&M? Did one of the teams cancel, or did the contract just run its course and then was not renewed? Does anyone recall?
The penalty fees for backing out of these home and homes need to be escalated to the point where it hurts to back out of the game. Understandably, other variables come into play causing games to be postponed and what not. But if a team has to forfeit $1MM for backing out, equivalent to one home game's revenue, they will think twice about backing out. The large schools will easily pay $500K and walk. You start getting up to $1MM and they really start looking hard. Add the requirement to for the backing out team to find a suitable replacement to be approved by LSU, and you start to have a decent contract that makes both teams liable.
Best I can recall, the series ran its course and A&M chose not to renew the contracts for all the wrong reasons....yadayadayada.
In the long series with A&M in the 60s and 70s, the game was played in Tiger Stadium almost every year. When A&M wanted home and home arrangements in the 80s it became more difficult to schedule them, when we had to play 8 SEC games instead of 6.
