The dramatic move comes against a Darwinian backdrop in which the Pac-12, decimated by the departure of the 10 universities, is attempting to rebuild with schools from the Mountain West.
The fight for survival between the Pac-12 and Mountain West moved from the boardroom to the courtroom on Tuesday when the Pac-12 began legal proceedings against its regional adversary over the so-called poaching penalty included in the football scheduling agreement between the conferences for the 2024 season.
It argues that the penalty, which punishes the Pac-12 financially for taking Mountain West schools, was designed “to stifle” competition and create an “artificial barrier to entry” for schools to join the Pac-12 – a barrier that, the complaint states, also harms the Mountain West’s own members by limiting their market value in college football realignment.
Formalized in late 2023, the scheduling agreement included a poaching penalty that attached a penalty for each Mountain West school – the amount started at $10 million and increased by $500,000 per school – that jumped to the Pac-12 prior to the summer of 2027, or two years beyond the end of the agreement.
It also notes that “Schools have departed from the MWC for other conferences in recent years. In none of those instances did the new conference pay the MWC ‘poaching penalties.’”
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