Can the Mountain West fend Pac-12 poaching efforts off for good? ‘We have a clear future'

New York Times

27-03-2025

This was supposed to be a key week for the Mountain West.
It hoped to land at least one team in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA men's basketball tournament after securing four bids, the most of any league outside the 'power' conferences. Instead, a Maryland buzzer beater against Colorado State shut the league out of the second weekend.
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The Mountain West also planned to make its case in court to dismiss the Pac-12's lawsuit seeking to negate $55 million owed in poaching fees. Instead, the two leagues agreed earlier this month to stay the case and look into mediation. The Mountain West will also enter mediation with its schools departing for the Pac-12 over nearly $100 million in exit fees, as part of a separate case.
What is the state of the Mountain West right now? Commissioner Gloria Nevarez feels pretty good, all things considered. Although five schools are on their way out to the Pac-12 in 2026, the Mountain West weathered the storm and found stability by rebuilding quickly last fall, adding four schools and locking a new conference together with a grant of rights.
'The sentiment is really positive,' Nevarez told The Athletic last month, around the time the mediation discussions began. 'We have a clear future.'
In December, the MW became the first Group of 5 conference to make the 12-team College Football Playoff, as Boise State earned the No. 3 seed and played competitively in a 31-14 loss to Penn State. The league's four NCAA Tournament bids this month matched the ACC.
'Every time there's a massive change in the postseason football format, the Mountain West has always broken through,' Nevarez said, noting Utah's BCS-busting 2004 season and Boise State's Fiesta Bowl win in 2014, the first year of the New Year's Six bowl structure.
Now comes the next chapter.
The Mountain West Conference was formed by a breakaway from the WAC nearly 20 years ago. But last year's breakaway from within nearly tore it apart.
Nothing around Pac-12 mediation has been set yet, according to the court docket, and both the Mountain West and Pac-12 still say they're in the right, as sides usually do. But they'll probably settle somewhere in the middle, which means the MW could receive something less than $150 million for the chaos its defectors caused.
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How real is the Mountain West's stability, especially with the Pac-12 still searching for at least one more school to add by mid-2026? First, it's important to remember how we got here.
In December 2023, the Mountain West threw a lifeline to Oregon State and Washington State following the Pac-12's collapse by creating a 2024 football scheduling agreement, through which Oregon State and Washington State paid the conference $14 million to play six MW teams each last fall. The leagues also talked about a potential merger, and the scheduling agreement included poaching fees that would protect the Mountain West if the Pac-12 rebuilt itself using MW schools but didn't bring in everyone.
But by the time the deadline for renewal came around last summer, relations had soured. The Pac-12 schools wanted to lower the price they were paying for the games; the Mountain West countered to increase it. Two weeks after the renewal deadline passed, the Pac-12 added four Mountain West schools (Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State and San Diego State) in an overnight move that rocked the conference. That didn't get the Pac-12 to the eight schools it needed, per NCAA bylaws, but adding more MW schools remained on the table.
Nevarez and Mountain West leaders rallied to hold it together. They wrote up an agreement, but Utah State jumped to the Pac-12, requiring the creation of another agreement anchoring the league around UNLV and Air Force. This time it worked, thanks to those two schools receiving larger paydays than the rest of the conference from the more than $150 million expected to come to the league through exit fees for the departures and poaching fees from the Pac-12.
'It was about communicating and holding the rest together,' Nevarez said. 'We needed to provide them a reason and a vision and path forward to stay.'
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That Mountain West agreement, obtained by The Athletic, lays out how some of that $150-ish million would be spent: Of the first $61 million, 24.5 percent each would go to UNLV and Air Force. Another $21 million would be split the same way. The next $18 million would go into a recruiting reserve to cover expenses for identifying and luring new members.
In addition, the Mountain West agreed to continue to hold its basketball tournaments at UNLV and plans to move its headquarters from Colorado Springs to Las Vegas.
'It was largely financial,' Nevarez said of convincing schools to stay. 'There were promises of financial media contracts on the Pac-12 side, but they were speculative. I tried to present to our schools the exit fees and a media estimate of what we could get. The schools that stayed agreed with it.'
That money is vital for a place like UNLV, which is somewhere near $30 million in debt. Athletic director Erick Harper recently told the school's board of regents that UNLV only has enough money for the first two years of new football coach Dan Mullen's five-year contract. (Harper said later that the school could fulfill its contracts.) It also just made a men's basketball change, hiring ESPN analyst and former Georgia Tech/Memphis coach Josh Pastner. The Mountain West realignment money has not yet been allocated for the school's budget.
'Once we get the final numbers from the conference office, we will make these adjustments and tell you exactly what we feel and plan to go toward the deficit and what will go into operating,' Harper told the board.
Late last year, the Pac-12 sued over the poaching fees, saying they were forced upon Oregon State and Washington State at a vulnerable time. Some departing schools also sued over the Mountain West's exit fees. The Mountain West disagreed, and the sides will soon discuss a settlement, a legal back-and-forth that has become the norm in conference realignment.
What if the Mountain West — and therefore UNLV — doesn't get all that it's owed? It's reasonable to expect any settlement would leave the league taking in less than $150 million. The Pac-12 still needs at least one more school, and UNLV's name continues to float around as a possibility. San Diego State athletic director JD Wicker said recently the Pac-12's new media rights deal could be completed by the end of March. Industry sources believe it could be closer to or after the Final Four in April, and further expansion by one or more schools could soon follow.
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The Mountain West maintains that its new grant of rights is rock-solid, regardless of the financial specifics. The document says that if any provision becomes invalid or unenforceable, it doesn't invalidate the agreement. That would seem to lock UNLV in. Harper's public comments didn't indicate a change of plans. So that's the situation, for now.
After holding itself together last fall, the Mountain West backfilled quickly, adding the rest of Hawaii's non-football sports, UTEP in all sports, Grand Canyon and UC Davis in non-football sports and then Northern Illinois as a football-only member. A quicker rebuild made those already in the league more comfortable. A path has been set.
'The Mountain West has great leadership,' NIU athletic director Sean Frazier said. 'They've gone through a hellacious transition and weathered the storm. They bonded together and sold the dream.'
The waves out west are less choppy than they were six months ago, but they're not fully calm yet. The Pac-12's media rights deal and subsequent final conference realignment moves might impact the Mountain West, or they might not. The Mountain West has lost heavyweights before and had new brands step forward and thrive. It hopes for a similar trajectory after these months of turbulence.
'If you look at the history of the Mountain West, we were the league of BYU, Utah, TCU,' Nevarez said. 'Schools come here and rise to the top if they put their minds to it and invest. There is a lot of opportunity here moving forward.'
— The Athletic's Chris Kamrani contributed reporting.