Sheer silliness by people who don't know anything about the law. It would take a court about 12.2 seconds to conclude that WVU was acting as an agent of the Big12.
Just more stuff intended to create headlines as opposed to serious analytical journalism.
I am fairly certain that you don't know anything about the law. Tortious interference has a pretty high bar. One party has to induce a second party to breach a contract with a third. BUT, there is a right of fair competition, such that competitors are entitled to pursue the same customer, even if some sort of contract exists between a customer and a vendor. The "breach" claim is pretty important, and the damages have to be substantial.
Without significant damages to a conference from departures, a judge would look to the liquidated damages within a league's bylaws as fair compensation for any TI claim. A plaintiff would have to make the case that damages extend beyond the liquidated damages in the contract the plaintiff has with the defendant, because a judge will say that a member has the ability to leave a partnership, otherwise you wouldn't have exit fees.
If you look at the history of threats of tortious interference claims against a conference, they have been in situations where one conference was facing devastating consequences from a raid by another. In 2003, the Big East was facing the loss of its BCS AQ status with the loss of Miami and VTech. The Big East rattled its sabres, and a conference with a bunch of teams that had put up mediocre or worse performance for years leading up to the NBE formation had their AQ status grandfathered. Baylor threatened a suit a year ago when it looked like the Big 12 was on the verge of dissolution. This froze the SEC in its tracks, and the SEC demanded releases from all the Big 12 schools before it would take Missouri.
The fact that the Big 12 is so concerned about TI leads me to believe that they believe the damages to the ACC could extend beyond 1 or 2 teams leaving. I suspect there is no damages claim by the ACC for FSU and Clemson leaving, because they just handshaked an agreement with ESPN that had to incorporate the likelihood of those two schools departing. But, if the ACC lost 4 or 6 or 8 teams, that would be a different story. I think that the Big 12 believes the ACC itself is in jeopardy from multiple fronts, and the Big 12 is treading very carefully, because the suit from the ACC leftovers could be a whopper if the various parties do not follow protocol.
