KISS the WAC goodbye. Getting out of WAC
is the ticket for UHOr am I getting ahead of things?
The news that eight schools in the Western Athletic Conference have decided to break away and form their own league caught many by surprise..
Perhaps it shouldn't have. As University of Hawaii football coach Fred vonAppen put it, "Nothing in sports surprises me. We're in the business of education and entertainment."
The key word there is business. The breakup of the WAC is just the start of a major overhaul that's coming across the country in the next few years.
Money talks, now more than ever, and the rumors abound.
Big 12 Conference members can't stand one another. The Pacific 10 Conference would like to add teams. Texas A&M has designs on the Southeastern Conference. Baylor wouldn't mind rejoining its former Southwest Conference mates.
The bottom line for Hawaii is this: The WAC is dead.
Rejoice!
The opportunity to improve the university's fortunes has never been better.
Let's face it, the 16-team WAC was a loser idea from the start. Adding Southern Methodist, Texas Christian, Rice, Tulsa and San Jose State only thinned the wallets of member universities.
ASSOCIATE athletic director Jim Donovan pointed out yesterday that UH's take of WAC revenue had dropped from a high of $863,000 in 1994-95 (before expansion) to $590,000 this year.
Expansion did little to enhance the conference's ability to land lucrative football bowl games or increase the number of teams chosen for the NCAA men's basketball tournament. Those are the two vehicles that make serious money for any conference, not just the WAC.
The eight breakaway schools are those that brought in most of the money, and they got sick of sharing it with fringe schools that didn't hold up their end of the transaction.
Brigham Young, Colorado State and Air Force have been consistent moneymakers for the conference in football. Utah and New Mexico were the cash cows in basketball.
As the millennium approaches, there will be little room for moochers and hangers-on.
Two alternatives appear most viable for UH:
Offer travel subsidies to the breakaway schools and hope they are willing to take on a ninth and/or 10th member.
In the first instance, Hawaii would maintain a position in a leaner, meaner, more lucrative conference that has basically swapped Texas-El Paso for Nevada-Las Vegas. The money UH spends in travel subsidies would likely be offset by increases in shared revenue.
Traditional opponents such as BYU, Utah and Air Force are said to be in favor of maintaining their ties to Hawaii in football and UH would benefit from playing in the same conference as Utah and New Mexico in men's basketball. That option ought to be pursued.
UNDER the second scenario, joining the Big West wouldn't be a stretch at all for women's sports. They just left that conference three seasons ago. Men's basketball, on the other hand, wouldn't benefit by way of power rating through a new conference affiliation, but it might have a better shot of actually winning the conference title and gaining an NCAA Tournament berth.
Being independent in football would take some innovation, but it could work. The Rainbows could still play the better teams from the former WAC and pick up marquee matchups to fill in their schedule. Playing the Notre Dames and UCLAs of the world, either home or away, even if you lose, is better than playing UTEP ever again.
Regardless of what university president Kenneth Mortimer, athletic director Hugh Yoshida and the coaches decide, however, their future will be better without the burden of the WAC.