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Press Box Dave Reardon |
[ AROUND THE WAC ]
Pining for a new
league is nothing newOLD fantasies die hard. It took years and years -- make that decades -- for that dust-covered dream of Hawaii's grand entrance into the Pac-10 to finally fade away. This occurred about five years ago, when the last remaining true believers realized Fred vonAppen was not the savior, and that an 0-12 football season was not quite the correct path to the big-time.
But wait ...
The dream came to life again, like Ted Williams' semi-frozen, dented head surely will in 2014. Dr. Evan Dobelle, a man who knows where he wants his program to be -- if not his new stadium -- carried the torch this time. And he had the gold-medal winner from Arizona State and the $800,000 coach from the NFL to do the job.
Then Dobelle found out, too, perhaps while eating Chinese food with Don Ho and Karl Lorch in Las Vegas, that the Pac-10 is perfectly happy to remain the Pac-10, and sees no reason for another outpost in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Or anywhere else for that matter. Those restive suits follow the beat of their own bankers; just because the other BCS conferences might be in a rush to get to 12 teams doesn't mean the crazy Californians are.
So the dream died again. And when one dream dies, it must be replaced by another.
Suffice to say the new fantasy has nothing to do with checking the maps for the best routes to Logan, Utah, and Las Cruces, N.M. Addition of the Aggies and the Aggies to the Western Athletic Conference (or the Amoeba League) was a big day for Utah State and New Mexico State. But it merely generated a collective shrug in Boise, Fresno, Reno and Honolulu.
This is why UH didn't buy into commissioner Karl Benson's $5 million buyout pledge (Benson knew it's hard to get a prenuptial agreement on the eve of a divorce, but he had to try).
The new dream in Hawaii is the instantaneous formation of the Super Midmajor Conference, combining the eight Mountain West schools with Boise State, Fresno State, Nevada and Hawaii. Of course, an automatic BCS bid comes its way, damn the MAC, C-USA and the Sun Belt. Your ideas about equal access change when you leave the beggars and join the big dogs.
If anything, the publicized fact that the WAC will survive (even if it is on life support) merely gives each of the Kinda Big Four a little bit of sorely needed leverage in their individual dealings with the Mountain West, which is where they all want to be two years from now.
But no one really knows what the Mountain West wants -- perhaps not even the Mountain West itself. The one thing for sure is that ESPN gets a vote.
That remains one of Hawaii's advantages, along with a bowl game. But does the unique TV time slot make up for having to fly across an ocean to get here?
UH athletic director Herman Frazier assures his constituency he's been working the phones to make sure Hawaii doesn't get left out in the cold.
We assume the conversations are compartmentalized, but are they really?
Is Boise State president Charles Ruch -- another vocal Mountain West wannabe -- in cahoots with Dobelle?
Does Frazier have secret conversations with Fresno State AD Scott Johnson?
I'd love to get a look at the phone records when it's all said and done.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Dave Reardon, who covered sports in Hawaii from 1977 to 1998,
moved to the the Gainesville Sun, then returned to
the Star-Bulletin in Jan. 2000.
E-mail him at dreardon@starbulletin.com
