It seems the legal battle between Miami and Arkansas State over a game that was never played has another layer of the onion to peel away. Before Arkansas State filed a lawsuit against the University of Miami over the cancellation of a regular season game last year, it was reportedly the University of Miami that fired off the first lawsuit in the back-and-forth.
According to A-State Nation, Miami filed a lawsuit against Arkansas State on February 13, two days prior to Arkansas State following through on its threat of pursuing legal action against the Hurricanes over the scheduling conflict. The lawsuit filed by Miami seeks to get out of the scheduling contract previously agreed to due to Arkansas State claims Miami presented Arkansas State with alternative dates in the future but Arkansas State refused to agree to either alternate date. Arkansas State, Miami claims, demanded the game at Arkansas State be played on earlier dates that were not available for Miami.
Miami also claims there was no requirement in the contract to reschedule any makeup date within a certain time frame. Miami presented options to play the game at Arkansas State in 2024 or 2025, but Arkansas State demanded the game be rescheduled in 2020 or 2021.
“ASU’s demands are unjustified and unlawful,” Miami claims in the lawsuit. “ASU has not indicated that it is unavailable or unable to play [the makeup game] on the Available Game 2 Dates.”
It would be nice if the two schools could settle on scheduling a makeup game in the future without having to resort to such legal methods, but it is also understandable why each would choose to go down these paths. Arkansas States wanted to do whatever it takes to get Miami to make their trip to Jonesboro for a football game, because it would be a huge game on the Arkansas State home schedule. From Miami’s point of view, distancing themselves from such a game in the future makes sense, because playing a road game at Arkansas State in the first place offered little incentive to Miami in the first place.