{"id":322219,"date":"2026-05-19T03:17:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T03:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/322219\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T03:17:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T03:17:09","slug":"pac-12-mountain-west-settle-lawsuits-over-exit-fees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/322219\/","title":{"rendered":"Pac-12, Mountain West settle lawsuits over exit fees"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Pac-12 and Mountain West Conference, and the five schools departing the latter for the former including Fresno State<\/a>, have reached an agreement in principle to settle lawsuits over exit and poaching fees that have dragged on for more than a year.<\/p>\n

The conferences in a joint statement on Monday said they have agreed to stay lawsuits that were filed in California and Colorado while they work to negotiate and finalize the settlement.<\/p>\n

What that means for Fresno State and its bottom line is not yet clear, but schools paying exit fees upon leaving a conference typically negotiate lower exit fees \u2014 the schools that ditched the Pac-12, starting with USC and UCLA, did not pay an exit fee with the conference\u2019s media rights contract expiring.<\/p>\n

The Pac-12 had filed suit claiming a poaching clause in a scheduling agreement between the conferences for the 2024 football season was invalid. Oregon State and Washington State, in need of a lifeline and football games after the Pac-12 lost 10 of its members, each played six Mountain West schools that season.<\/p>\n

That agreement between the conferences included a poaching penalty, through which the Mountain West would receive $10 million if one of its teams were to leave for a rebuilding Pac-12, with that amount increasing by $500,000 with each additional team to bolt.<\/p>\n

Fresno State, Boise State, Colorado State and San Diego State were admitted to the Pac-12 in September 2024 and later joined by Utah State, bringing that total to $55 million.<\/p>\n

The five schools will officially join the Pac-12 on July 1, along with Texas State from the Sun Belt Conference. Gonzaga is leaving the West Coast Conference to join the Pac-12 in all its sports as a non-football playing full member of the league.<\/p>\n

Colorado State and Utah State later filed a separate suit in Colorado that was joined by Boise State, seeking to avoid paying exit fees from the Mountain West of more than $20 million.<\/p>\n

The Mountain West added Hawaii and Texas-El Paso as full members, Grand Canyon as a full non-football member and Northern Illinois and North Dakota State as football-only members to the league. Hawaii previously played football in the Mountain West and was in the Big West in its other sports.<\/p>\n

The Mountain West schools that did not jump to the Pac-12 were promised significant payouts funded by the poaching penalties and exit fees. UNLV and Air Force are to receive 24.5% of the first $61 million collected by the Mountain West.<\/p>\n

Related Stories from Fresno Bee<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pac-12 and Mountain West Conference, and the five schools departing the latter for the former including Fresno…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":["post-322219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}