WESTERN ATHLETIC CONFERENCEADs mull options
at ‘awkward’ meetings
With all the lame ducks at the Western Athletic Conference athletic directors meetings, the WAC should be called the QUACK.
For obvious reasons, the planning talks over the past three days in Scottsdale, Ariz., excluded the ADs of the schools leaving for Conference USA after next year (Rice, Southern Methodist, Tulsa and Texas-El Paso).
"For me, it was awkward," Hawaii athletic director Herman Frazier said. "A lot of those people are friends. You sit there and have discussions about issues and then excuse them to talk about the future. The funny thing is a lot of people thought it could've been the other way around. Everyone thought the west teams were going to leave, but as it turns out the east is leaving. It is very awkward. I have no experience with teams leaving a conference."
That's because Frazier is a relative newcomer to the WAC, having spent most of his career at Arizona State of the rock-solid Pac-10.
League commissioner Karl Benson, however, has been in this situation before. He was at his current post when eight schools left to form the Mountain West Conference in 1999.
He sounded calm and collected yesterday after the meetings.
"The position we're taking is we have choices, we have options. We're not in any kind of panic or urgent spot," Benson said.
The league's board of directors acted quickly last year when Rice, SMU and Tulsa bolted, picking up New Mexico State and Utah State. The athletic directors of the two new schools, both nicknamed Aggies, attended this week's meetings.
In some ways, losing UTEP is a more stunning blow even though it is just one school. It was the league's oldest member.
Benson and Frazier said the WAC still has to decide how many schools, if any, it wants to invite now.
"We didn't rule out any possibilities. If there's an advantage of being a nine-team league with scheduling, we'll look closely at that," said Benson, who confirmed that Idaho, Louisiana-Lafayette and North Texas are the potential invitees.
Louisiana Tech is "absolutely" remaining in the WAC, Benson said, following printed speculation the Bulldogs might return to the Sun Belt.
Frazier said he prefers a nine-team league so that each football team has four home and four road games and plays all the other schools every year. In the 10-school WAC, schools went two-year stretches without playing each other.
"Four and four is good for everybody," Frazier said. "I want to figure out which of those teams is best for Hawaii. We don't have a lot to choose from. And those are three that have interest in being with us. We'll do our due diligence to see who is the best fit."
Today the ADs meet with the conference football coaches. Beginning tomorrow, Frazier will attend the Fiesta Frolic, an event hosted by the Fiesta Bowl for football coaches and athletic directors from around the country. Frazier said he will work on scheduling at the event.
He doesn't expect to seal any deals this week, but said he is continuing to work on a possible series of games with UCLA starting as early as 2006.
Benson said the WAC's new TV contract with ESPN is still being worked on.