The WAC--or WACK?

[mel]

Re: The WAC--or WACK?

Just like politics, the thing to do is "follow the money".

BCS big money. Moving to a bigger conference, big money.

WAC TV coverage? UH getting only one nationally televised football game this year. Everything else local PPV. My UH TV season is over after Sept. 2.

A smaller diluted WAC = less TV coverage = less money.

Will be watching BYU instead this year. Probably have more live, free games on TV.

[Frankie's Market]

Re: The WAC--or WACK?

I've had all day to think about this, and I'm convinced of a couple of things.

1. This is all because of the BCS. I realize this really goes without saying, but it's worth saying again. All this jockeying for position and inclusion, especially at the mid-major, non-BCS level is because the non-BCS want a share of the pie. One can hardly blame them, and as long as this realignment happens within the framework of the rules (such as they exist), there's little a school like UHM can do to stop it. There are all kinds of reasons to consider the many great things a school like UHM has to offer, but if the primary consideration is the BCS, Hawaii doesn't have anything.

2. If the NCAA is the governing body for NCAA division I-A football, it may be in its best interest, bottom-line wise, to let this continue. However, if it takes its role seriously, it has to look out for the interests of ALL of its member schools, not to mention the game of college football itself. It MUST care that schools like Hawaii are being left in the lurch, that schools like Utah State and Louisiana Tech could be realigned out of existence through no fault of their own.

Without some kind of fair shot for all teams to pursue a national title, the NCAA is going to see the BCS schools continue to bully the non-BCS schools out of existence, as in the case of the surviving WAC schools. This isn't good for the game. It has to do something, if not in this specific case to help this particular conference, then at least in general to keep it from continuing.

What can do the NCAA do about it?

Break up the TV deals that the major conferences & Notre Dame currently enjoys and impose an arrangement whereby all the Division I-A schools share equally? Is that what you had in mind?

Guess what? That was pretty much how it all used to be from the 1950s all the way up to 1983, when the NCAA was the exclusive bargaining agent for all schools, when it came to nationally televised game. The schools (from Alabama all the way down to the likes of Cornell and William & Mary) would be limited to two national broadcasts each regular season, which prevented the elite schools from hogging too much TV exposure. Sure, perhaps it wasn't a perfect system. It didn't put Drake Univ. on an equal footing with Texas. But at least it ensured the survival of the vast majority of football programs in the Div. I-A level.

It was the major schools that were resentful of having to share their TV money with the smaller schools. And so it came to pass that the Board of Regents of Oklahoma and Georgia successfully sued the NCAA in Supreme Court in order to break up the latter's monopoly control over the TV rights. Ever since then, every individual school have been free to negotiate their own TV deal. At first, only the Big Ten and the Pac Ten schools negotiated their own independent deals. The rest of the Div. 1-A schools (including Notre Dame) were part of a cartel called the College Football Association (CFA). But when Lou Holtz rebuilt the Fighting Irish into a national powerhouse after a down period in the early '80s, ND struck a lucrative deal for themselves with NBC starting in '91. And that set the disintegration of the CFA into motion.... and led to the situation today where it's every conference for themselves, every school for themselves.

Virtually every conference re-alignment for the last 20 years have been done in the name of expanding TV market coverage. Some leagues have prospered. Others have actually gone into extinction. Now really. Why should anyone be shocked about the WAC treading water at this point, when a league like the old Southwest Conference (SWC) has already gone into extinction?

Yes, the BCS schools are the big bully on the playground. But when it comes to TV revenue and exposure, the NCAA has no power to cap or equalize. You can thank the Supreme Court for that.

[Mike_Lowery]

Re: The WAC--or WACK?

RIP, Western Athletic Conference.

Damn, if the MWC maintained TCU and Utah, it would've been a stronger conference than the Big East and in some years, the ACC.

http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/Global/...asp?S=13534131

[Walkoff Balk]

Re: The WAC--or WACK?

It makes sense to dig out of the WAC.

[Honoruru]

Re: The WAC--or WACK?

With Boise State and TCU, plus Fresno State, Nevada (and Hawaii in 2013), and also Air Force, UNLV, San Diego State, etc., the Mountain West will be a very strong conference. This is a no brainer. The WAC is dead. Now we just have to see what happens with the other UH sports, which may be stronger than football.