Rutgers will pay $11.5 million exit fee to American Athletic Conference

Rutgers is set to join the Big Ten this summer. (Ned Dishman/Getty Images) Rutgers will pay the American Athletic Conference an exit fee of $11.5 million when

Rutgers is set to join the Big Ten this summer. (Ned Dishman/Getty Images)

Rutgers will pay the American Athletic Conference an exit fee of $11.5 million when it joins the Big Ten this summer.

The fee is lower than the $15 million the AAC had been seeking, but the $11.5 million agreement allowed Rutgers to drop its lawsuit against the conference claiming that it should not be forced to pay the full fee. The school did not give the conference 27 months notice of its intention to depart, a warning period that is mandated by the league's by-laws.

The news comes three months after Louisville agreed to a reduced $11 million fee to leave the AAC and join the Atlantic Coast Conference, which the Cardinals will officially do this year.

Rutgers and Louisville are among a host of schools that have departed -- or are planning to depart -- the former Big East conference. West Virginia, Pittsburgh and Syracuse have all left the conference in the past two years.

The Scarlet Knights were able to lower the stipulated exit fee because Louisville had successfully negotiated a lower fee several months earlier, according to ESPN.

Rutgers and Maryland will both officially join the Big Ten on July 1.

Wow, big sports news out of New York … Rutgers and the AAC have apparently agreed to an $11.5M exit fee.

— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) February 12, 2014