That is why I said in my example that they were required to now deposit a lot more, but before doing so they backed out.

Anyway, I am not arguing against you and claiming breaching a contract is criminal. I just think you are being very rigid and poo-pooing the additional reality that someone on one side making a short term smart financial move can really negatively impact people on the other side. And when you have only a limited number of people in the field (such as a limited number of CFB teams), in the bigger picture it can be overall harmful the the sport and certainly to specific teams if this type of thing happens too often (which up top this point it likely has not happened too much so as to cause any major harm to the sport). And it is certainly not good when there are only a dozen or so teams with enough cache to repeatedly do this for short term gains of millions of dollars. Your comments presume that the 'have nots' have enough or equal power to force the top echelon teams to agree to huge buy-outs. Those top teams can move on and schedule other have nots who are willing to take the chance because they need to, and sign the contract for a lower buy out.