San Diego State University’s Dicey Dance: Risky Resignation and the Mountain West Standoff

If conference realignment is a game of musical chairs, Mountain West Conference member San Diego State University’s bravado and presumptuousness have put it in a position to be left standing when this latest round of music stops.

Premature Move

On June 13, believing an invitation from the Pac-12 was close at hand, SDSU President Adela De La Torre sent a letter to the Mountain West Conference declaring the school’s intention to resign from the conference it co-founded in 1999. In the intervening two weeks, the dominos could not have fallen less favorably for the Aztecs—and that initial declaration could not appear to have been any more ill-conceived.

The circumstances did require SDSU to act quickly, if not quite so ham-handedly; the deadline for the Aztecs to give the MWC the required one-year notice of departure was June 30. Had the Aztecs given notice after that June 30 deadline, the exit fee would’ve more than doubled, ballooning from nearly $16.5 mill. to around $34 mill. The problem with SDSU publicly stating the intention the entire world already knew they had was that the Aztecs, at that point, were operating without an offer from the Pac-12 (their presumed destination) or the Big 12 (their long-shot suitor), or, for that matter, anyone else.

Legal Tactics and Public Perception

It’s hard to know exactly what compelled SDSU to go out on such a seemingly delicate limb. One possibility is that San Diego State’s legal team wanted them to get something down in writing before the June 30 deadline. That way, even if the Pac-12 offer were to have come after June 30, SDSU could argue that their June 13 letter should be interpreted as having provided the requisite notice. Which makes sense precisely because SDSU must’ve had some sense that the Pac-12 would not have finalized a new media rights deal by then (they haven’t) and that the Conference of Champions would not make any official offers to prospective new members until that rights deal was done.

(Aside: If you’re the Pac-12, and the addition of SDSU really was a foregone conclusion, why go into negotiating a new media rights deal without having that Southern California territorial footprint locked up to show-off to the networks? Isn’t the conference’s negotiating leverage less without that footprint firmly in place? Don’t the networks want to know exactly what your product will be before they agree to pay you many hundreds of millions for it?)

 

LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY - MARCH 26: President Dr. Adela de la Torre of the San Diego State Aztecs celebrates by cutting down the net after defeating Creighton Bluejays in the Elite Eight round of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament at KFC YUM! Center on March 26, 2023 in Louisville, Kentucky.
LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY – MARCH 26: San Diego State Aztecs’ President Dr. Adela de la Torre revels in victory by trimming the net post vanquishing the Creighton Bluejays in the Elite Eight stage of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament

What bothers people most about SDSU’s conduct is neither their ambition, nor their reasonable and responsible aims of mitigating the costs of departing the league. SDSU knew it would have to act quickly and decisively to capitalize on the fleeting reputation afterglow afforded a Cinderella (or at least Cinderella-adjacent) national runner-up. Chris Rock’s incisive truism about men and loyalty applies with equal force to college athletics: a university, like a man, is as faithful as its options. This holds especially true for those on the outside of the Power Five looking-in from the steerage class that is the so-called Group of Five.

Reasonable people intuitively get this. What triggers the collective BS detector is SDSU’s brazen attempt to have their cake and eat it, too. As speculated earlier, the June 13 “intent to resign” letter felt like a hedge, a post-hoc contingency lever—a rhetorical Time Machine, if you will—that SDSU might’ve employed in the event they received a Power-5 offer after the Mountain West’s June 30 deadline.

Negotiation Tactics and Repercussions

But, they wanted to hedge the other way, too. In the same breath—literally the same communication—SDSU asked the MWC to extend that deadline by a month, citing “…unforeseen delays involving other collegiate athletic conferences beyond our control.”

So, in one sentence they’re basically communicating to you: “Hey, look, we’ve met the deadline.” In the next, they’re saying: “circumstances are such that it’s going to be impossible for us to meet the deadline.” Then, perhaps figuring it best to make a big ask with their reading audience likely lost in the throes of maximum confusion, SDSU ended by asking the MWC to consider allowing them to pay that exit fee in quarterly installments, instead of all at once by June 2024.

After coming to, what other thought could the MWC have had, except: What chutzpah!

So, let’s get this straight. You’re letting us know you’re going to want out of the league but don’t won’t out of the league quite yet, but do want to be credited as though you’re resigning now, but also want another month to keep your options open. And, oh, by the way, that little fiction we’re playing at, where we’ve told you we’re not officially out of the league but expect to be treated as out for the purposes of the exit fee…yeah, we also want to pay that exit fee according to a timetable that works most favorably for us!

More simply: President de la Torre and Athletic Director JD Wicker overplayed their hand, figuring the homely, humble old Mountain West would lack the guts and guile to call their bluff. Which, of course, is exactly what happened, as Gloria Nevarez, the steely-spined new MWC commissioner, made clear very quickly that there’s a new sheriff, er…conquistador, in town.

 

Commissioner Nevarez’s Firm Stance

ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO - JANUARY 27: Mountain West Conference commissioner Gloria Nevarez addresses the media before a game between the Air Force Falcons and the New Mexico Lobos at The Pit on January 27, 2023 in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Gloria Nevarez, the Commissioner of the Mountain West Conference, engages with the media on January 27, 2023, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Nevarez, who took over Jan. 1 as just the second commissioner in conference history, didn’t start this feud—and she hasn’t yet ended it either—but she has made clear that the MWC won’t be dictated to—even, and perhaps especially, by a school understandably high on its own supply after a run to Monday night of the Final Four.

As ambiguously as SDSU made its requests and framed its present status vis-à-vis the MWC, that’s how quickly and unequivocally Commissioner Nevarez responded in the negative. No, we will not extend the June 30 notice-of-withdrawal deadline; no, we will not allow payment of the exit fee in four installments; no, we will not distribute your pro-rata share of the revenue from this year’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament (reported to be $6.6 mill.) because, per league policies, your share of that revenue—thanks again, by the way, for that deep and profitable tournament run—will be considered, as ESPN reported, part of your “financial obligation tied to withdrawal,” and, as such, “withheld.”

“They want to see if the Mountain West Conference is going to handle this nicely,” an MWC source told ESPN. “Well, that’s not going to happen. Everyone wants to find the best financial path for themselves, and it’s clunky.”

Mountain West Conference Uncertainty and Lessons Learned

Now, with the impending Pac-12 media rights deal still not executed and, thus, no Pac-12 invite in the immediate offing, SDSU faces a real prospect of being left conference-less for the 2024-2025 season.

This past week, SDSU, cornered, sought a take-back. Actually, in declaring its intent to remain in the Mountain West Conference, SDSU attempted less of a take-back and more of a George Costanza—recall the Seinfeld where George quits in a blaze of glory on Friday, only to think it over over the weekend and resolve to return to the office Monday as though Friday had never happened.

“Oh what…that?” George asks sheepishly, knowing that the only way to save both face and job is to play the none-of-it-was-real card.

“Are you kidding? I didn’t quit. You took that seriously?!”

Dime-story psychotherapy bromides have taught today’s kids to call that “gaslighting.”

George’s gambit, of course, goes awry. His boss, unmoved, kicks George out of the office and, seemingly, into the unemployment line.

To this point, Commissioner Nevarez has proven herself similarly impervious to emotional manipulation, taking an unyielding stance on SDSU’s status vis a vis the MWC come the start to the 2024-2025 season (i.e. July 1, 2024).

The Aztecs are out.

For now.

As all Seinfeld freaks will recall, George’s no-nonsense boss, in a moment of bourbon-aided bonhomie at an office happy hour, eventually offers George his old job back, thereby foiling Costanza’s ultimate revenge gambit of slipping his boss a “mickey” in order to hold the boss’s “indecent” behavior over him and blackmail his way back into his old job.

It’s classic Costanza and not an example SDSU brass should emulate. Embarrassing the conference into submission is probably an unwise tactic against a poker player as shrewd as Nevarez. And if her steeliness as a negotiator is any indication, she probably holds her liquor better than George’s boss, too.

Then again, the credibility—and profit—that the San Diego State Aztecs have brought to the Mountain West Conference far outstrip anything George Costanza ever brought to a workplace.