Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the latest filing in the bitter legal dispute between the Western region’s top two collegiate conferences is that the Mountain West is ready to play offense.

The Mountain West is the defendant in the case and had largely remained the more passive side, but it came out swinging in Thursday’s filing in a California court.

Part of that was simply the nature of the legal timeline. An answer was due to the Pac-12’s claims that an agreement between the conferences to pay $55 million in poaching fees for taking five schools from the Mountain West was unenforceable and illegal.

But the 86-page document went above and beyond a simple response. The Mountain West made several counterclaims that included allegations of promissory fraud and breach of contract.

The

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