The Hotline mailbag publishes weekly. Send questions to pac12hotline@bayareanewsgroup.com and include ‘mailbag’ in the subject line.
Or hit me on Twitter/X: @WilnerHotline . Please note: Some questions have been edited for clarity and brevity. It seems expensive for the Pac-12 to poach Mountain West schools, but could the conference offset the penalty by reducing payouts to any new MW members? What valuation for ‘Pac-2’ media deal would justify MW schools paying an exit fee and possibly a temporary $1 million to $2 million reduction? — @TroutTyler A great question that has multiple layers of financial complexity, so let’s start with the basics and drill down from there.
According to the terms of the scheduling agreement between the Pac-12 and the Mountain West, the former would owe the latter a poaching penalty of approximately $10 million per team. That cost comes in addition to the exit fee departing MW schools would owe their former conference. How much? Figure on roughly $20 million if the departing schools give more than one year of notice and $35 million to $40 million if they give less than one year of notice.
(Assume the situation will be resolved at least 12 months in advance.) Washington State and Oregon State will have at least $65 million at their disposal — the amount withheld from the 10 departing universities — that can be used to cover the poaching penalty for up to six MW teams. But that doesn’t account for the departure fee owed by the outg.