Sports Watch
PARDON the Western Athletic Conference if it will seem a bit schizophrenic this season. WAC seems to be
stuck in ‘neutral’After all, breaking up is always hard to do. The 16-team conference's divorce became final earlier this month, and parting was acrimonious.
It was more like the kind of rancor you see in a marital divorce with charges and countercharges over what's "yours" and what's "mine."
We're reminded of it because the WAC is holding its football meetings today.
The WAC office is still in Denver, but media day with the league's coaches and players is being held in Dallas.
The WAC office remains in Denver for now, according to commissioner Karl Benson, because it's sort of a halfway point between the schools in the far-flung league that stretches from here to Houston.
Never mind that there's no WAC team in the Rocky Mountain area with the defection of Colorado State, Air Force and Wyoming up the road.
Deep in the heart of enemy territory.
BENSON told the Denver Post that the WAC office will remain in the Mile High City until such a time when either a Texas or California location becomes the logical site.
Right now with its "neutral" site, the WAC office has been described by Benson as the "Switzerland" of intercollegiate athletics.
I just hope that "Switzerland" doesn't get caught in an avalanche when college football's landscape shifts, as it surely will.
Rumors continue to swirl about Texas Christian, Rice, Southern Methodist and Tulsa possibly leaning toward joining Conference USA in the near future.
It used to be that I never worried about the next millennium. Not anymore, since it's so close at hand.
And if the Mountain West Conference ever decides to add Fresno State as its ninth member, heaven help the University of Hawaii, already geographically isolated as it is.
Already the vultures are waiting for the carrion.
With Nevada leaving the Big West to join the WAC next season, the five other Big West schools that play football - New Mexico State, Idaho, Boise State, Utah State and North Texas - are looking for other schools they can join to make up a new conference.
New Mexico State, though, is hoping to hold out long enough for the WAC to break up once more with SMU, Rice and TCU the ones saying so long this time.
THAT would leave twice-abandoned schools such as Hawaii, San Jose State and Texas-El Paso on the outside looking in again.
For sure, the Mountain West would then give Fresno State even stronger consideration as its first, and most likely, final expansion team.
The irony of it all, if that happens, is that it was the original WAC adding the Texas schools and Tulsa that led to the unwieldy league's breakup in the first place.
It has been said and written before, imagine if the WAC presidents only had agreed to expand with just UNLV and San Jose State.
Why, the Rainbows would still be playing BYU and traveling to Laramie. And local lads at Utah would be playing before friends and relatives at Aloha Stadium every two years.
Also, we'd be seeing the likes of Rick Majerus and Dave Dietz every year.
Wait. Maybe it wasn't that bad of an idea after all. But you know it was because we now have to worry about the abandoned Texas schools doing some abandoning of their own.
Besides, the WAC football meetings today would have been in Las Vegas, not Dallas.