The remaining six presidents in the Western Athletic Conference have reached an agreement with their counterparts at Fresno State University and the University of Nevada, which will delay the departure of those two schools from the WAC to the Mountain West Conference.
Under the settlement, the two schools will wait until the 2012 season to leave for the Mountain West, and in return only pay a fraction of the exit fee of $5 million that the WAC had insisted upon.
The WAC filed its lawsuit against the Mountain West in September, just weeks after Fresno State and Nevada had announced their acceptance of invitations to join the Mountain West.
The lynchpin of the WAC’s lawsuit was a change made to league bylaws in 2006 that required any school that wanted to depart the conference the following year to notify the conference by July 1.
The WAC stood ardently by that bylaw because the schools’ departure would have had a dramatic impact on the remaining schools, which would have had to scramble to replace Fresno State and Nevada on their schedule.
The league would also have had only six teams playing football in 2011, which is below the minimum of eight required by the NCAA to qualify as a conference in the Football Bowl Subdivision and be eligible for additional revenues.
After the suit was filed, Nevada challenged the decision of the WAC schools, arguing that the board of directors meeting at which the lawsuit was authorized did not constitute an official board meeting because only six of the nine conference members were represented..
“On behalf of Nevada, I demand that the WAC voluntarily dismiss the Complaint immediately upon receipt of this letter,” Nevada counsel Mary Phelps Dugan wrote in a letter to the WAC’s counsel, Jon Bradley of Golden, Colo.. “The bylaws of the WAC only authorize the Board of Directors to initiate litigation. … Nevada is currently a member of the WAC and Nevada President Milton D. Glick is a member of the Board of Directors. … President Glick has received no notice of a Board meeting at which the Board could have taken action to authorize litigation. Similarly, neither Boise State President (Bob) Kustra nor Fresno State President (John) Welty has received notice of such a Board meeting.”
WAC commissioner Karl Benson disagreed, claiming the presence of six board members “did constitute an official WAC Board of Directors meeting.” He cited Article III, Section 2(b)(5), which reads: “A Member Institution, from the date of its decision to either terminate its membership in the Conference or to join another conference, shall remain a member of the Conference until its actual date of departure, but shall forfeit its right to be present at meetings of the Board of Directors when matters relating to prospective new Member Institution, or to Institutions that have accepted invitations to join the Conference, are being discussed.”
The settlement reportedly calls for each departing school to pay $900,000, instead of the $5 million fee. In addition, sources have suggested that the schools will not share in the revenue split for the 2011-2012 season.
Fresno State Athletic Director Thomas Boeh told the Fresno Bee that “We feel comfortable with the agreement. Our position was that we didn’t owe $5 million. But at the same time we recognize leaving the conference often does have some financial component. We’ve got to wait 12 months, but the trade-off is a highly desirable financial outcome. We’ll manage it without a lot of difficulty.” The paper reported that Fresno State will make annual payments to the WAC of $180,000 for five years starting Aug. 1, 2011.
Meanwhile, Mountain West Commissioner Craig Thompson said in a statement:
“To have allowed Fresno State and Nevada to leave a year early would have put the WAC at a tremendous disadvantage. It would have cost the remaining schools severe hardship. While the financial settlement was substantially less, the six [remaining] WAC presidents and chancellors wanted to settle the date rather than be tied up in the courts.”
A copy of the settlement is available at:
http://media.fresnobee.com/smedia/2010/10/28/09/wacresolut.source.prod_affiliate.8.pdf
