had 4 scheduled games that were not played, including 2 in Provo and 2 in South Bend. It does not add up that Notre Dame would cancel the games in South Bend. The way these contracts are usually structured requires the cancelling team to pay a buyout regardless of where the game is scheduled. From a practical standpoint, this means that teams never cancel home games because that means they pay twice; they pay the buyout and then they lose all of their revenue (tickets, concessions, TV, etc.) for that game, and then to replace that home game with another home game they either have to pay a bunch for a team to come and play or they have to agree to a H-H with someone where they also add an extra road game that they don't make any money for (once the payouts for the 2 games even out).

This makes me think that there was something out of the ordinary for the ND deal. I think ND could either unilaterally cancel all 4 games without any penalty or there was some sort of contractual element that made the games contingent. Otherwise it just wouldn't make sense for ND to cancel all 4 games; under the normal contractual provisions ND would just cancel the BYU games and then BYU would have to decide whether it would take the buyouts for those games and go play 2 in South Bend or it would cancel the 2 South Bend games, essentially saying if you don't come here then we won't go there, in which case the dollars would essentially be a push. There hasn't been any reports of anything like that happening, so I doubt that's the case.