West Virginia Settles Lawsuit, Will Join Big 12 This Season

After a vicious legal battle between West Virginia University and the Big East conference, a settlement has been reached and the Mountaineers' path to the Big 12 has been cleared. West Virginia will officially leave the Big East and join the Big 12 in July, allowing the Mountaineers to play in their new conference home this upcoming season.

Under Big East bylaws, a 27-month waiting period was required before any member could defect to another conference. West Virginia sued the Big East to short-circuit the waiting period, and the Big East responded with a lawsuit of its own, attempting to keep West Virginia within the conference for the full transition period.

According to the Charleston Daily Mail, a midsized paper in the state of West Virginia, the university has agreed to pay $11 million, along with an additional $9 million contributed by the Big 12, in exchange for a waiving of the waiting period. Big East bylaws mandate a $5 million exit fee for any institution leaving the conference, a fee West Virginia has partially paid off.

The settlement represents a net $15 million gain for the Big East conference, which, while nothing to take lightly, hardly covers the aggregate income loss the conference will suffer for losing West Virginia, one of its premier athletic members. Big East commissioner John Marinatto struck up a successful tone following the news and released a somewhat hollow statement.

"The bylaws are the foundation of how the conference governs itself," Marinatto said Tuesday. "To have the court in West Virginia acknowledge their validity of enforceability obviously reinforces the premise that the conference is viable moving forward, and in a position to do so."

With more conference expansion upon the horizon, and 16-team super-conferences seemingly inevitable, the Big East-West Virginia lawsuit may set precedent for future transactions between exiting teams and their former conferences. In an era when television rights are worth billions of dollars, a one-time payment totaling $20 million cannot exactly be considered a victory for any conference.