LARAMIE, Wyo. — The Pac-12 conference has made another move against the Mountain West in the form of a lawsuit filed Sept. 24 seeking invalidation of the “poaching penalty” included in the conferences’ scheduling contract. This comes as the Pac-12 officially takes its fifth team away from the Mountain West, which would mean that the conference has to pay about $55 million if the penalty is enforced.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Northern California, is challenging what its authors call an “anticompetitive and unlawful” penalty that the MW “imposed” in the scheduling contract that reportedly makes it difficult for Pac-12 member schools to compete in college athletics.
The suit’s introduction goes on to say that the penalty saddles the conference with unnecessarily high fees for engaging in competition by poaching MW schools.
“The MWC imposed this Poaching Penalty at a time when the Pac-12 was desperate to schedule football games for its two remaining members and had little leverage to reject this naked restraint on competition,” the lawsuit said. “But that does not make the Poaching Penalty any less illegal.”
The penalty that the conference is trying to have a judge declare unenforceable was included in the two conferences’ scheduling contract drafted in December 2023, just months after all member schools but Washington State and Oregon State announced their departure from the Pac-12.
The lawsuit argues that the Mountain West took advantage of the conference’s poor and desperate position to not only force the inclusion of the penalty, which would be in effect for two years following the beginning of the contract, but also charge an exorbitant $14 million just to schedule six games each for the two remaining schools.
The Pac-12 also charged that the penalty is unlawful due to its targeted nature against the conference specifically. The lawsuit argued that fact is especially important considering that the two conferences are geographically natural competitors and said that some MW schools had expressed interested in joining the Pac-12 for years prior.
The language of the contract states that the Pac-12 is to pay a $10 million fee for every school taken with an escalator of $500,000 for each additional school. This is on top of the exit fees that each Mountain West school has to pay as they transition to their new conference, which the Pac-12 agreed to pay. The lawsuit argues that those exit fees, now totaling a little under $100 million, are enough.
The conference also noted in the lawsuit’s factual allegations portion that it did not impose similar fees to the departing schools in 2023.
“Unlike other conferences, including the MWC, the Pac-12’s bylaws did not impose ‘exit fees’ on the departing member schools,” the lawsuit said.
Utah State transitions to Pac-12; the future of the conferences
Now both conferences sit at just seven member schools each, as the suit formally announced for the first time that Utah State is the fifth and most recent MW school to leave for the Pac-12. Sources had indicated this was official as of yesterday, Sept. 23, but neither Utah State nor either conference had officially confirmed it.
Per NCAA bylaws, FBS conferences need eight member schools to be a legal and competitive collegiate athletics conference. With both conferences at seven schools now, each has some shopping to do.
Within the Mountain West, both the Air Force Academy and UNLV declared their commitment to the conference just yesterday. However, since news of Utah State’s departure, UNLV backed out of that commitment, though it hasn’t officially made a move away from the conference yet.
