Realignment season keeps heating up.
The Pac-12 is suing the Mountain West over what it calls an unlawful and unenforceable “poaching penalty” that would cost the rebuilding conference more than $40 million for adding Boise State, Fresno State, Colorado State and San Diego State, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court.
The antitrust complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California and is seeking a declaratory judgment by a judge.
“The action challenges an anticompetitive and unlawful ‘Poaching Penalty’ that the MWC imposed on the Pac-12 to inhibit competition for member schools in collegiate athletics,” the lawsuit said.
The Mountain West has exit fees of upward of $17 million for departing schools. Those fees can increase depending on how much advance notice a school provides, and are not at issue in the lawsuit.
The Pac-12 is challenging poaching fees that were put in place in the Mountain West’s football scheduling agreement for this season with Oregon State and Washington State, the only current Pac-12 members this season.
The fee starts at $10 million and increases by an increment of $500,000 for every additional school the Pac-12 adds from the Mountain West. With four already on board, the total is $43 million.
Mountain West Commissioner Gloria Nevarez said in a statement the Pac-12 agreed to the fees and acknowledged that they were essential to her conference members.
“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,” she said. “The fees at issue were included to ensure the future viability of the Mountain West and allow our member institutions to continue providing critical resources and opportunities for our student-athletes. At no point in the contracting process did the Pac-12 contend that the agreement that it freely entered into violated any laws.”
The Pac-12 also extended invitations on Monday to Mountain West schools Utah State and UNLV.
Utah State was admitted Monday, according to the lawsuit, though the conference and school made it official Tuesday night with an announcement.
“Today marks another exciting step for the Pac-12 — and it’s just the beginning of phase two,” Pac-12 Commissioner Teresa Gould said in a statement.
There was still no word on UNLV.
See here for some background. The two remaining PAC-12 schools have some cash at their disposal because of the exit fees all of their departing brethren paid. That doesn’t mean they want to be taken to the cleaners. I’m sure there’s plenty in here to keep the lawyers busy.
As noted, the PAC-12 added a seventh member in Utah State. If ULNV accepts, they’ll be up to eight teams again, which makes them a Real True Conference per the NCAA. And it would put the poor MWC at six schools, below that threshold, and we know what that will mean. The PAC-12 tried and failed to lure four schools from the AAC to their fold; I presume some combination of geographic sanity and daunting exit fees from the AAC held them back. But now the MWC will surely be sniffing around – the initial story about the PAC-12 and the first wave of schools they picked off from the MWC suggested they might recruit from the FCS level as well, with Tarleton State and North Dakota State among the candidates mentioned – so we must brace ourselves again. I don’t know where exactly this all ends, I just know it’s not ending anytime soon.
UPDATE: The wheel will need to keep spinning.
Air Force and UNLV are expected to remain in the Mountain West Conference, sources confirmed to ESPN.
Both schools were incentivized to stay with significant financial packages made possible, in part, by the collective exit fees the conference’s five departing members — Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State and Utah State — will be responsible for paying to leave for the Pac-12. Each school is expected to pay roughly $18 million to depart.
UNLV chose to remain in the Mountain West despite overtures from the Pac-12, and Air Force received heavy interest from the American Athletic Conference. With both pledges, the Mountain West stands at seven football-playing members and will need to add two more full members to meet the NCAA minimum criteria (Hawaii is only a partial member).
The decision from UNLV is a blow to the Pac-12, which was optimistic the Rebels would join the five other MWC schools in the new-look conference as it rebuilds from last year’s collapse. The Pac-12 is left with seven members and probably will have to turn its attention outside the Mountain West as the rest of the conference’s schools — Hawai’i, New Mexico, Nevada, San Jose State and Wyoming — are expected to sign binding agreements Thursday to remain in the conference.
I don’t know where the PAC-X and MWC go from here, or whether the AAC will continue to be in the mix, but something will be happening. Everything is written in sand.