The Pac-12 has filed a lawsuit against the Mountain West over its “poaching penalty,” which is expected to cost the conference over $50 million for adding Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State and San Diego State.
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California.
The backstory: After being left with just two members – Oregon State and Washington State – the Pac-12 raided the Mountain West a couple weeks ago by inviting the four universities to the conference.
- Each of the four schools are required to pay the Mountain West $17 million apiece in exit fees. The Pac-12 has $250 million in its war chest from a settlement with the other 10 universities who fled to other conferences. That money could be used to cover each school’s exit fee.
The big picture: The Pac-12’s lawsuit specifically targets the poaching fee that was agreed to in the scheduling agreement signed with Oregon State, Washington State and the Mountain West for the 2024 football season.
- Per the agreement, the Pac-12 would be required to pay the Mountain West $10 million for poaching a school, with that number increasing by $500,000 for each additional school to switch conferences.
- That brings the total to $43 million for the four universities, with another $12 million on the books due to Utah State accepting an invitation to join the Pac-12 on Monday.
Go deeper: The Pac-12 argues in the lawsuit that the Mountain West’s exit fees already compensate the conference for the departing members.
- The conference argues that the penalty’s only goal is to lock universities in from leaving for another conference and that the penalty is excessive and unreasonable.
- “There is no legitimate justification for the ‘poaching penalty,’” the lawsuit reads. “In fact, the MWC already seeks to impose tens of millions of dollars in ‘exit fees’ on MWC schools that depart from the conference. To the extent the MWC would suffer any harm from the departures of its member schools, these exit fees provide more than sufficient compensation to the MWC.”
- Oregon State and Washington State had paid the Mountain West a total of $14 million for the scheduling agreement.
What they’re saying: Mountain West Commissioner Gloria Nevarez said the Pac-12 has taken advantage of the Mountain West through the conference’s willingness to agree to the scheduling agreement.
- “The Pac-12 Conference is challenging a contractual provision that it expressly agreed to and acknowledged was essential to the Mountain West Conference’s willingness to enter into a Scheduling Agreement, all while advised by sophisticated legal counsel,” Nevarez said in a statement. “The provision was put in place to protect the Mountain West Conference from this exact scenario. It was obvious to us and everyone across the country that the remaining members of the Pac-12 were going to try to rebuild.”
- Nevarez said the poaching fee was included to ensure the future viability of the Mountain West.
- “At no point in the contracting process did the Pac-12 contend that the agreement that it freely entered into violated any laws,” Nevarez said. “To say that the Mountain West was taking advantage of the Pac-12 could not be farther from the truth. The Mountain West Conference wanted to help the Pac-12 schools and student-athletes, but not at the expense of the Mountain West. The Pac-12 has taken advantage of our willingness to help them and enter into a scheduling agreement with full acknowledgment and legal understanding of their obligations. Now that they have carried out their plan to recruit certain Mountain West schools, they want to walk back what they legally agreed to. There has to be a consequence to these types of actions.”
