We have reached the point in college athletics realignment where Aesop’s Fables have come into play. Specifically, the farmer and the snake.
In that one, the farmer finds a snake frozen on a winter morning and near death. Wary of the snake’s venom but moved by pity, he warms the reptile to keep it alive. Once revived, the snake does what comes naturally and bites the farmer, who dies.
The Mountain West Conference is a less altruistic farmer. The Pac-12 is a less deadly snake. The bite is not fatal—not yet anyway—but it’s painful. And now the Pac-12 has doubled down on the venom by going to court.
The league has pivoted from sad victim to remorseless predator to the next step, brazen litigious gangster. It is quite a heel turn, but that’s how the food chain functions in the realignment jungle. This is an ecosystem that operates without shame, and without concern for the health of the enterprise as a whole.
After crippling the Mountain West, the Pac-12 is now suing it to get out of paying fees associated with a scheduling agreement it signed last year. The Pac-12 is trying to avoid “poaching penalties” for swiping five (and counting?) schools from that league—Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State and the most improbably important school yet, Utah State. Now the world waits to find out whether UNLV will make it six, with Air Force also weighing its options.
With the implosion of the Pac-12 as 10 members departed for three different conferences, the Oregon State Beavers and Washington State Cougars had half of a schedule of games each. The Mountain West threw them a lifeline—with stipulations, of course—so Oregon State and Washington State agreed to the stipulations while desperate last year.
There was a $14 million charge up front to work Oregon State and Washington State into multiple schedules for this season, and the fee was scheduled to escalate to $30 million for 2025. Again, not exactly the most charitable farmer tending to the snake—the MWC wanted to push the Beavers and Cougars to join their league.
Instead, they resuscitated the Pac-12 by robbing the Mountain West. Now they are suing to avoid forking over some of what is contractually owed.
The departing Mountain West schools are on the hook for $17.5 million each in exit fees—those fees are not being contested. But there were additional eight-figure penalties written into the scheduling agreement for each school if the Pac-12 takes Mountain West members to rebuild, which is exactly what has happened.
The poaching penalty starts at $10 million for one school and escalates by $500,000 for each additional school. With the fleeing five ticketed for departure in 2026, the bill for poaching is now $55 million. That’s in addition to the $87.5 million in aggregate exit fees.
That’s a lot of money, right? Well, it’s literally what the Pac-12 signed up for. And now wants out of.
The Pac-12 is challenging the legality of the poaching penalties, saying that they constitute an anti-competitive restraint of trade for the rebuilding league. The league has savvy representation, using the same firm that helped it win a key legal battle with Its departing schools last year.
While acknowledging in the suit that Oregon State, Washington State and Pac-12 leadership signed the deal, they argue that it was done under duress. And a signed agreement isn’t worth anything if it’s an illegal signed agreement.
“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 Pac-12’s lawsuit asserts. “But that does not make the poaching penalty any less illegal …”
Naturally, the Mountain West leadership has thoughts.
“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,” Mountain West commissioner Gloria Nevarez said in a statement Tuesday. “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. … At no point in the contracting process did the Pac-12 contend that the agreement that it freely entered into violated any laws.
“To say that the Mountain West was taking advantage of the Pac-12 could not be farther from the truth. 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.”
Ultimately, the Pac-12 is probably navigating toward negotiating a reduced exit payment. Firing off a legal challenge that could take years to untangle is a shrewd way to bring parties to the negotiating table, especially if one party (the Mountain West) isn’t of a mind to sit around waiting for an undetermined but lengthy period of time for at least $55 million.
But while the world is full of negotiated settlements, this would be one of the more glaring college sports examples of trampling on a signed agreement. Honoring a deal is a sucker play in the modern landscape.
Coaches get out of contracts all the time. So do schools. Sometimes full buyouts are paid, but sometimes they are bargained down. Schools have negotiated their way out of conferences earlier than they were contractually bound. Florida State and Clemson are attempting to sue their way out of forfeiting massive amounts of media rights if they leave the Atlantic Coast Conference before the expiration of contracts they signed.
Now the Pac-12 is trying to bail on a deal that helped keep its two remaining members viable.
For those in the crowd that have declared NIL and the transfer portal the ruination of college sports—where is the loyalty from the players?!?—the supposed leaders of the enterprise are behaving far worse. With more money involved. And longer-lasting ramifications.
In one form or fashion, about any school outside the 20 or 30 biggest brands in college athletics could be the frozen snake someday—left outside and in dire straits. And every single one of them would react the same way if a figurative farmer came to their aid in that moment. Upon surviving, they would bite the person that saved them.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Pac-12 Trying to Bail on Mountain West Deal That Helped Its Two Surviving Members.
