Amid Pac-12 expansion, Teresa Gould reportedly drags MWC to court over poaching penalty as four schools trigger conference realignment

The extensive Pac-12 expansion plan, which began with the addition of Fresno State, Boise State, San Diego State and Colorado State, took another turn on Monday with the inclusion of the Utah State Aggies. The Aggies are the fifth program poached by Commissioner Teresa Gould from the Mountain West Conference.

It also emerged that the conference had a poaching penalty in place in its scheduling agreement with the Pac-12, imposing fines of up to $11 million per program for poaching MWC programs.

On Tuesday, the Pac-12 filed a lawsuit in federal court in the Northern District of California against the MWC's poaching penalties, declaring them "unenforceable" and opening up a new front in the ongoing conference realignment battle.

According to Front Office Sports, the addition of the Utah State Aggies has added the Pac-12's debt to the Mountain West Conference to a mammoth $55 million, including the poaching penalties.

“The Poaching Penalty saddles the Pac-12 with exorbitant and punitive monetary fees for engaging in competition by accepting MWC [Mountain West] member schools into the Pac-12,” the conference wrote.

“The MWC imposed this Poaching Penalty at a time when the Pac-12 was desperate to schedule football games for its two remaining members and had little leverage to reject this naked restraint on competition. But that does not make the Poaching Penalty any less illegal, and the Pac-12 is asking the Court to declare this provision invalid and unenforceable.”

MWC Commissioner Gloria Nevarez already revealed that her conference would stick to its guns regarding programs paying exit fees as per regulations when the four programs departed for the Pac-12.

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Pac-12 expansion lawyers won a conference lawsuit last year

The Pac-12 expansion has targeted several programs from different conferences including the Tulane Green Wave and the Memphis Tigers from the AAC but primarily, the poaching has been done from the Mountain West Conference.

The lawyers the conference has engaged in the case against the MWC are the same ones that the Oregon State Beavers and the Washington State Cougars engaged to win the rights to the Pac-12 assets, a case that they won.

The lawyers managed to stop the dissolution of the conference and won $65 million in exit fees from the departing members, which has aided the Pac-12 expansion plan that has kept it alive.