Tuesday, May 26, 1998
BYU, Utah and UNLV
By Star-Bulletin staff and wire reports
are among the defectors;
UH has no commentALBUQUERQUE -- The 16-team Western Athletic Conference is being gutted by a decision today of eight of its members to leave what has been billed as the largest conference in NCAA Division I.
The eight schools that have decided to leave the conference are New Mexico, Nevada-Las Vegas, Colorado State, Wyoming, Air Force, Utah, Brigham Young and San Diego State.
A news release said the schools "made their decision after concluding that the present 16-team conference has been unable to achieve its intended goals, and that the challenges faced by the conference are insurmountable."
University of Hawaii officials could not be reached for comment.
The release said that the principal problems cited by the defecting schools include "a lack of any natural affinity" among the conference member teams, a breakdown in traditional rivalries, hefty travel expenses and the "inability of the present conference to achieve greater national recognition and TV revenues."
The release said the decision to leave the conference "was reached reluctantly."
Lee Bartlett, assistant to president of BYU for communications, confirmed the conference breakup.
Bartlett stressed this was not a movement solely pushed by one or two schools, but all eight together.
"It's very much a joint decision among these eight schools and the product of a lot of effort to find answers to questions that proved to be insurmountable."
Those questions involved "schedules, pairings, building and protecting rivalries.
"Any way you slice it, there was never an answer that was satisfactory to all the members.
"There was a lack of affinity when you have schools so widely spread. They all may be wonderful schools, but its been more difficult than anticipated" to make the 16-team WAC work.
The conference became the largest league in the nation in 1996, when it expanded to 16 teams. The teams were organized under two, eight-team divisions, which ended some traditional rivalries of the 37-year-old conference.
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