Staying or going? The saga between San Diego State and Mountain West comes to a close
The drama that unfolded last month between San Diego State and the Mountain West has come to an end for now.
Mountain West Commissioner Gloria Nevarez said Wednesday that the conference and the Aztecs “came to a resolution” earlier this week that has the university staying in the league at least through 2024.
“San Diego State is a positive to the Mountain West,” Nevarez said at Mountain West media days. “We are better with San Diego State in the league, and I feel really good about where we landed.”
This whole saga began when San Diego State sent the conference a letter in June saying it was considering leaving the conference as early as 2024 and asking for leniency on its $17 million exit fee.
San Diego State, presumably waiting on an invitation to join the Pac-12, contended that it was just exploring options with its first letter, but the conference disagreed, saying it was a formal notice of resignation. The parties went back and forth and lawyers eventually got involved.
The June 30 deadline for action came and went, with the Aztecs still in the Mountain West.
Nevarez, who was hired last November, said the conference took a strong stance as a way to discourage schools from using realignment as leverage in the future.
“It used to be that conference movement was an anomaly,” she said. “Now it seems to be a regular part of business. What I found is that we have very strong conference policies that are not designed to completely prevent schools from leaving, because we acknowledge movement is going to happen, but to protect the conference when those things happen.”
Nevarez didn’t go into detail about why the conference eventually softened its stance, but the resolution came with a couple of conditions, according to reports.
San Diego State will pay the Mountain West’s legal fees associated with the disagreement, and the university agreed in writing not to use its initial letter to retroactively ask for a smaller exit fee if the Pac-12 or any other conference extends an invitation before 2024, according to a story in the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Nevarez confirmed Wednesday that the conference has released the $6.6 annual distribution it was withholding as the first installment of San Diego State’s exit fee, a step the league took after receiving the initial letter.
Conference realignment is a topic that will continue to pop up, Nevarez said, but she said she doesn’t worry about other conferences poaching Mountain West teams.
“As long as we maintain our positioning in the FBS space in that high-middle position, we’re going to be fine,” she said. “We just have to make sure we’re on the front foot, that we continuously evaluate our league and we get ahead of these things.”
In the interest of strengthening its national brand, the Mountain West has retained Global Prairie — a marketing firm that will do a brand examination and analysis. Nevarez said she hopes to have results of the analysis this fall.
