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Monday, July 24, 2000

BCS gives WAC
cold shoulder

The Bowl Championship
Series meetings will be held
without the Western
Athletic Conference

By Paul Arnett
Star-Bulletin

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- The moment the Western Athletic Conference released a statement last month that said the league had enjoyed unparalleled success, the Mountain West did its best to rain on commissioner Karl Benson's unlikely parade out of the graveyard.

Because the new WAC hadn't been together as long as the eight teams in the Mountain West, the Bowl Championship Series opted not to extend the WAC an invitation to its meetings.

The Mountain West and Conference-USA aren't voting members, but they are in the BCS boardroom. Mountain West officials wanted to make sure it didn't lose any public relations war with the WAC, so the announcement was made the next day after the WAC pointed out it not only had survived the split, but may have been better for it.

Granted, Benson wants to be an integral part of the BCS and the big money it commands. But this invitation isn't really anything new.

"It was the same invitation that the WAC had had prior to the breakup,'' Benson said Saturday. "Conference-USA and the WAC were considered nonsignatory members of the BCS. It is mainly window-dressing, but they are in the room and we aren't.

"I think it's an exaggerated role that's there. We enjoyed it while we were there, obviously, but again, I don't think that's going to be a factor in our ability to have some success.''

A few years ago, Brigham Young University had an unprecedented season, but was passed over by Fiesta Bowl officials. They opted to give one of the two at-large spots to Penn State to play the University of Texas.

The Cougars wound up in the less prestigious Cotton Bowl and there-in lies the beginning of the end of the 16-team WAC. BYU's presence in the Mountain West provides that league with perhaps a better shot of being an at-large selection, but if a WAC member finishes among the top six teams in the nation, it will be just as eligible as anyone from the Mountain West.

"When the BCS informed me that they had selected the Mountain West, one of the reasons they said that we weren't selected was that the WAC was still in transition in terms of membership,'' Benson said. "And as they evaluated our membership vs. Mountain West membership, they had a longer history than we did. I think it's going to be subject to year-to-year. ''

Despite this setback, Benson still was all smiles. A year ago in Dallas, he put on a happy face when talking about the league's future, but even he conceded that things didn't look good for the league.

That changed, however, after the Fox Sports Network agreed to a limited schedule of national and regional broadcasts involving WAC teams. This year, Fox will show at least five national games and will be broadcasting the inaugural Silicon Valley Bowl that will be played at Spartan Stadium on the campus of San Jose State.

If the WAC champion comes from the West, it will go to Silicon Valley. If the WAC champion is out of the East, that team will go to the Mobile Bowl. The WAC could be involved in as many as four postseason games. The Mountain West only has two -- the Liberty and Las Vegas bowls.

Tulsa University advancing to the Final Eight in basketball and the San Jose State baseball team landing a spot in the coveted College World Series also lifted the WAC out of the doldrums.

Now whether that translates to real dollars is anyone's guess. The WAC will enter negotiations with Fox Sports as early as February. At that time, a deal is expected to be hammered out that will be considerably better than the two-year contract in place.

"The current arrangement was revenue share based on ad sales," Benson said. "We went into the business arrangement knowing there was the potential that we may have to underwrite some production costs.

"But what's more important to the WAC right now? The television exposure or the revenue stream? I think right now it's still exposure. Is there a financial potential in this Fox deal? Yes there is. We went into this knowing that we had to prove that we were a property in demand."

Even without a solid television deal -- by comparison, the Mountain West has a seven-year, $47 million contract in place with ESPN -- the WAC teams still received dollar amounts in June similar to what the league paid out before the split in 1998.

"We have the NCAA basketball money and they have television revenues,'' Benson said. "As it turned out, we weren't as financially damaged as everybody thought we would be.''