Is Mountain West Near Insolvency?
Asking this question on Google gets lots of references to the supposed $70 million settlement of their lawsuits with the Pac 12 and former teams. But it doesn't go any deeper than that. Asking about current MW accounts payable produces nothing. But there are a number of factors which indicate that MW is in very poor financial condition:
-They are obligated to pay $61 million expeditiously to satisfy contractual distributions to the teams they retained. This must be paid before anything else.
-They owe $18 million for the cost of getting new members.
-They owe legal fees for their Pac 12 lawsuits.
-They have already been paid $47 million by the departing schools, by retaining their 2025 and 2026 conference shares. They were overzealous about this and owe $2 million back to the five departing schools:
"Following the MW bylaws, the conference withheld annual distributions from its five departing schools for the 2025 and 2026 fiscal years. Those were roughly $6 million payments. So, the MW would owe those schools a $2 million re-payment after withholding a total of $12 million."
It appears that MW only has about $25 million left that they can collect from the Pac. Their net asset valuation is about $50 million, and almost all of this is withheld distributions from the departing schools.
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/841472434
Even with another infusion of $25 million from the Pac for poaching, MW's obligations exceed their total assets by at least $20 million. Since they are a non-profit the easiest course is to collect the missing money from the member schools....or reduce their distributions from the lawsuit settlements.
Murray's final summary of the MW's legal maneuvering:
"Bottom line — this settlement should create some new revenue for Nevada and other MW schools. But it's clearly not program-changing cash for the non-UNLV/Air Force schools that remained in the MW."