Mountain West counterclaims survive in Pac-12 antitrust suit
Carly Nairn
SAN JOSE, Calif. (CN) — A federal judge ruled Friday collegiate football’s Mountain West Conference can proceed with some of its counterclaims against rival conference Pac-12, saying five member schools did not resign due to “at-will” contracts when they decided to rejoin Pac-12.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan van Keulen granted Pac-12’s motion to dismiss Mountain West’s counterclaim for promissory note fraud but allowed tortious interference and unjust enrichment through “quasi-contract” counterclaims to proceed.
Though Pac-12 argued Mountain West’s membership agreement bylaws — which let member schools leave for any reason, though not at any time, and only under certain conditions — meant that they were “at-will”, Van Keulen disagreed, finding those bylaws are not “at-will” contracts and have an exit fee provision in place, allowing for the tortious interference claims.
Additionally, she said it was premature to dismiss Mountain West’s “quasi-contract” counterclaim, because there are factual disputes about how much money the Pac-12 was paid for the games Mountain West was contractually obligated to provide under a scheduling agreement, especially with added benefits through scheduling, such as “athletic department coordination” and “broadcast production meetings.”
“Accordingly, the viability of the MWC’s quasi-contract claim depends not just on whether the court declares the termination fees ‘invalid and/or unenforceable,’ but on its reasons for doing so,” van Keulen wrote.
Pac-12 initially claimed in 2024 Mountain West imposed an unfair scheduling agreement and “poaching penalty” and termination fees on Pac-12, which cost it millions of dollars when it was struggling to retain its roster of teams. The Pac-12 conference lost of 10 of its 12 member schools to Mountain West in 2022 and 2023, with only Oregon State University and Washington State University as its current teams, but re-added five Mountain West schools for the upcoming 2026-2027 season.
The dispute now comes from a clause noting that if fewer-than-all of Mountain West’s schools joined the Pac-12, Mountain West would be owed a termination fee for each school that departed, prompting the Mountain West Conference to demand $43 million for poaching the five teams, Pac-12 says.
In dismissing the promissory note fraud counterclaim, Van Keulen said in September 2024, the five Mountain West member schools — Boise State University, Colorado State University, Fresno State University, Utah State University and San Diego State University — independently announced their joining Pac-12.
Mountain West accused that “When ‘[t]he Pac-12 represented to the MWC that it would pay the termination fees,’ it ‘knew these representations were false … because [it] intended to recruit fewer than all MWC teams and to refuse to pay the termination fees in that event by challenging the termination fees as unlawful and unenforceable.’”
Van Keulen said the Pac-12’s argument that Mountain West’s promissory note fraud claim was barred by the economic loss rule which was sufficient to dismiss the claim.
Both sides have tried to fit the case into existing categories — for example, that it’s an employee poaching case. However, termination fees and the scheduling agreement contain unique aspects that don’t fit within the cases the parties have argued, van Keulen said in an earlier ruling. She said more development of a factual record is needed.
Neither party immediately responded to a request for comment.