The Pac-12 and Mountain West conferences have reached an agreement in principle to resolve pending lawsuits over \u201cpoaching\u201d and exit fees.<\/p>\n
The conferences issued a joint statement along with five schools on Monday saying the parties agreed to stay lawsuits in California and Colorado while they \u201cwork to negotiate and finalize the settlement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boise State, Utah State, Colorado State, San Diego State and Fresno State joined the conferences in the statement.<\/p>\n
The settlement agreement comes a day before a discovery hearing in the case was set to take place in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.<\/p>\n
The Pac-12 and some of the schools joining the conference filed a lawsuit in California in 2024, claiming the poaching clause the league agreed to when it signed a scheduling agreement for its football teams was invalid. The clause called for payments to the Mountain West of $10 million for the first team that left, with the amount increasing by $500,000 for every additional team \u2014 to a total of $55 million.<\/p>\n
The scheduling agreement with the Mountain West allowed Oregon State and Washington State to piece together football schedules after 10 schools left the Pac-12 in 2024, leaving the conference’s future in doubt.<\/p>\n
The Pac-12 had its motion to dismiss denied by Judge Claudia Wilken in November after the sides failed to reach an agreement in mediation last summer.<\/p>\n
Colorado State and Utah State filed a separate lawsuit \u2014 later joined by Boise State \u2014 against the Mountain West seeking to avoid exit fees ranging from $19 million to $38 million.<\/p>\n
Colorado State, Utah State, San Diego State, Fresno State and Boise State are set to leave the Mountain West and join the Pac-12 this fall. The conference added Texas State in June to reach the eight-team minimum to be eligible for an automatic bid for its champion in the College Football Playoff.<\/p>\n
Gonzaga also is leaving the West Coast Conference to join the Pac-12 as a non-football member this fall.<\/p>\n
The Mountain West has added UTEP, Hawaii and Northern Illinois for football starting this fall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pac-12 and Mountain West conferences have reached an agreement in principle to resolve pending lawsuits over \u201cpoaching\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298907,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[108718,25417,108717,202,196,197,42839,108719,108720,85939,43368,942,200,82,84,83],"class_list":["post-298906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-claudia-wilken","tag-fresno","tag-pac-12-mountain-west-lawsuits","tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","tag-product-40776-ap-california-sports-only","tag-product-40777-ap-colorado-sports-only","tag-product-40782-ap-hawaii-sports-only","tag-product-40783-ap-idaho-sports-only","tag-product-40784-ap-illinois-sports-only","tag-product-40808-ap-oregon-sports-only","tag-product-40815-ap-texas-sports-only","tag-product-40820-ap-washington-state-sports-only","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}