Tuesday, June 2, 1998

Defectors reject
UH overture

Mortimer and Welty informed
of decision in hotel lobby

By Boyce Garrison
Special to the Star-Bulletin

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif.-- The eight teams leaving the Western Athletic Conference will not be inviting any teams to join their group in the near future.

Colorado State University president Al Yates, the spokesman for the departing eight, made that announcment today, meaning Hawaii will remain in the Western Athletic Conference.

University of Hawaii president Kenneth Mortimer and Fresno State University president John Welty were informed of the decision by Yates in the lobby of the Inn at Spanish Bay.

Mortimer refused comment after he was informed and calls to his room went unaswered.

"The presidents have agreed we will not consider enlarging at this time," Yates said. "We won't consider revisiting this issue in the near term. Our discussions about this really have to focus on the eight institutions. And what we want to emphasize is that we have eight institutions that are fully compatible, that we believe form the basis for what we believe will turn out to be a high quality conference."

"One of the reasons for this is that we have a lot of work to do."

An unconfirmed rumor said that the eight schools leaving -- Utah, Brigham Young, New Mexico, Colorado State, San Diego State, Wyoming, Air Force and Nevada-Las Vegas -- were deadlocked by a vote of 4-4 on which school would be added.

"I feel much better about continuing on with the WAC," Southern Methodist University president Gerald Turner, the new presidents' chairman, said after learning of the announcement by Yates. "If we'd been at seven schools, I would have said we needed eight. Given that there are eight, if a school is interested, we might listen. There's no real pressure to go with nine."

WAC commissioner Karl Benson said he was not approached by the departing schools about becoming their new commissioner. He said the office may have to move from Denver to Texas because it didn't make much sense to remain in a state where there were no WAC schools.

Mortimer appeared confident yesterday that Hawaii can make a go of it while remaining in the WAC, despite the seemingly poor fit of Hawaii in a conference with four Texas universities and another in Tulsa, Okla.

"I think the WAC has a very bright future," Mortimer said. "They have some very interesting television markets, some intense rivalries among the Texas schools. Our rivalry with Fresno State has been heating up in the last couple of years. It's gotten quite intense. We're beginning to develop a rivalry with San Jose State.

"Now that we know what the facts are and the lay of the land, we can start moving forward," UH associate athletic director Jim Donovan said today. "It seems like public sentiment, from listening to the talk radio shows, at least, was definitely starting to turn heavily to just stay in the WAC. There even seemed to be a building animosity toward the defecting eight."

"There's a series of things like that in the last few years and I think they will be fed and nurtured in the next year."

With much speculation about other conferences like the Big 12 possibly breaking up, Mortimer said he believes many teams will be switching allegiances. So the WAC might not be a bad place to ride out the storm, even if it means not playing teams to which Rainbows fans have become accustomed.

"We have rivalries with a lot of the teams that are leaving and that's part of the concern we feel about say, not playing BYU every year," Mortimer said. "But that's what all of the alignments in the next four or five years are all going to be about, remaking traditional alignments."

Mortimer said there were financial advantages to staying in the WAC. Conference by-laws stipulate that any team leaving the conference leaves behind any money it earned from the NCAA men's basketball tournament. That $2.6 million the WAC is scheduled to receive from the NCAA for the next five years split seven or eight ways instead of 16 will offset any additional travel costs Hawaii would see because of trips farther east to play the Texas schools and Tulsa.

"Once we leave Hawaii, I don't think the travel costs are all that different from going to Provo, Utah, or Houston and Dallas," Mortimer said.