An Honest
Day’s Word
WESTERN Athletic Conference presidents will meet this weekend to decide what to do about their league. WAC needs to look
West for expansionTexas Christian has left for greener pastures in Conference USA and Southern Methodist either didn't believe C-USA was worth the entry fee or C-USA didn't believe SMU was worthy.
Either way, TCU is out, probably by fall of 2001, and SMU is still in the WAC.
What to do, what to do?
Here's some advice.
COZY up now to as many Western teams as you can, because when the money shakes out in a few years, the Texas schools currently in the WAC and the Louisiana and Arkansas schools professing interest -- and maybe some that aren't -- are going to form their own league faster than you can say regional television marketing.
WAC commissioner Karl Benson yesterday expressed confidence that Southern Methodist would continue to deliver the Dallas market for the WAC.
That sounds great. Dallas is a major city. Lots of money. Yada, yada, yada.
"That's a huge plus for the WAC for television reasons, for recruiting reasons," Benson said at the teleconference. "Dallas was a critical market for us."
Maybe true, but, I have lots of relatives and friends in Texas and, let me tell ya, the WAC isn't a huge market for Dallas. SMU doesn't amount to a hill of beans in that town -- or the rest of Texas, for that matter -- unless you went to school there.
Mustangs? Get real.
In Texas, you're either a Longhorn or an Aggie. The rest of the schools simply don't matter.
Regardless of the baloney SMU president Gerald Turner spreads about commitment to the conference, not many sports fans in Texas give a rats tail about the Western Athletic Conference or the University of Hawaii -- June Jones or no June Jones.
One look at the "crowd" assembled for the SMU-Hawaii game at the Cotton Bowl two weeks ago told that story well enough. What were there, 6,000 ... 8,000 ... fannies actually in the seats?
Shoots, the North Dakota-North Dakota State game outdrew Hawaii-SMU and that was played in the booming metropolis of Grand Forks, N.D.
SO, WAC presidents beware. It's not much of a stretch to see a conference made up of Louisiana Tech, Louisiana-Monroe, Louisiana-Lafayette, SMU, Texas-El Paso, Rice, North Texas, Tulsa and Arkansas State.
You'd have Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana. Those four states are perfect regional rivals. That's nine teams that could learn to dislike one another quickly, forming heated rivalries and earning themselves a nice little regional broadcast package.
So, WAC presidents -- especially those West of the Texas-New Mexico border -- do what you can to coax Boise State, New Mexico State, Utah State and Idaho to join your conference.
Expansion now will be followed by contraction later, and by then you'll have your own tight-knit group of little Western schools, and not a half-bad conference -- especially in men's basketball where the money is expected to increase exponentially in the coming years.
Get with it, fellas, because the future you chart this weekend is going to be important.