Matthew Postins: Time for UNT to move on, get WACky

09:23 AM CDT on Sunday, May 2, 2004

Right about now, Mean Green nation is still feeling the sting of rejection after Conference USA invited Texas-El Paso to join its league, and the Miners accepted.

It sucks, doesn’t it? It’s just like that really hot girl in high school that laughed at you when you asked her to the prom. Not that that happened to me, mind you, but I’ve heard it’s like that.

With Friday’s announcement went UNT’s best option in changing conferences — and C-USA Commissioner Britton Banowsky’s credibility. Didn’t Banowsky make it clear several months ago that he wanted a Central Time Zone conference? And isn’t UTEP in the Mountain Time Zone, or did El Paso move east between November and now?

C-USA took UTEP because of its basketball tradition, and I guess I can’t blame them after losing Louisville, Cincinnati and Marquette to the Big East. UTEP is a good band-aid in that regard. But I still think UNT was C-USA’s best long-term solution for expansion.

UNT officials need to get over this fast, because the fluidity of conference realignment has presented another option. Western Athletic Conference commissioner Karl Benson told the Denton Record-Chronicle on Friday that UNT is on his conference’s shopping list for expansion.

Truth is the Mean Green have been on the short list for some time. Benson was biding his time until C-USA made its decision.

Now the WAC can come calling. What will UNT do? Well, UNT President Dr. Norval Pohl expressed some serious reservations about moving to the WAC. And what about UNT Athletic Director Rick Villarreal, who is supposed to be the face of that department? Well, he didn’t return phone calls to the Record-Chronicle’s Brett Vito on Friday, so who knows what he’s thinking right now.

What am I thinking? It’s time for UNT to get WACky and take its chances in a new conference.

The Sun Belt Conference’s viability as a conference is slowly diminishing. Just take a look at its newest football members — Florida Atlantic and Florida International, both Division I-AA. While all other conferences cherry pick from other Division I-A conferences, the Sun Belt must survive off schools trying to prove themselves at the next level. Eventually, that tap will run dry.

What if the WAC raids the Sun Belt and strips it clean like a Pennsylvania coal mine, after UNT decides to take its chances in the SBC? It takes eight schools to have a Division I-A football conference, and if the WAC takes the two-division route, which is an option, it will need four more schools. The Sun Belt is the conference the WAC will have to turn to for survival.

Where will the Sun Belt turn to survive? The Southland? None of those schools are anywhere near ready to make the leap to the next level. In this worst-case scenario, UNT becomes an independent, and unless it’s Notre Dame or a service academy, a school can’t survive as an independent these days.

UNT must think of itself in this situation and not the Sun Belt. Sure, the conference has been good to them the past few years, especially in football. But in the interest of self-preservation UNT must say "yes" as quickly to the WAC as UTEP did to C-USA.

I understand some of Dr. Pohl’s concerns, and they’re legitimate. The travel isn’t the best, with the WAC stretching all the way to Hawaii. In the current alignment, UNT would be one of only two schools in the Central Time Zone (Louisiana Tech is the other). So that budget would certainly go up.

But there are many other reasons to move to the WAC. First, there’s surely more money to be had in revenue sharing, TV money and bowl money in the WAC than the Sun Belt. I don’t know what the bump would be, but the Sun Belt currently awards $100,000 in revenue sharing to each of its schools.

The Sun Belt has one bowl tie-in; The WAC has four, though that could change after this wave of realignment is finally complete. But I don’t see the WAC losing more than one bowl tie-in, especially since three of its current bowls — Hawaii, Humanitarian (Boise, Idaho) and Silicon Valley (San Jose) — are in WAC cities.

There’s also a bump in prestige— albeit marginal — with a move to the WAC. A WAC championship carries more weight on the national scene than a Sun Belt championship.

Finally, moving to the WAC might put UNT in a better position to leap to a better conference down the road. Dominating the Sun Belt in football is one thing. Doing it in the WAC is entirely another. A few years of competing well in the WAC could set UNT up for another shot at C-USA membership.

The weight is on Dr. Pohl’s and Villarreal’s shoulders now, because I firmly believe a WAC invitation is close at hand. Their decision when that invitation comes will say a lot about the direction they hope to take UNT’s athletic department in the coming years.

And if I’m a UNT fan, that decision better mean Hawaii’s on the 2005 football schedule.

Bad logic in that article.

Sorry, but the Belt teams stay put. There would have to be 3-4 Belt teams from the Central Time zone making the leap to even begin to make that strategy halfway work. But that's also the problem -- if these Belt teams are going to be playing mostly fellow Belt teams anyway, why would they pay an entrance fee to keep half their current conference and replace the other half with games all the way out on the West Coast?

I honestly believe that for once, geographical sanity will rule the day and the Belt and the WAC will preserve some regional configurations. Now is the best opportunity to do that.

Im a Marshall fan that lives in the heart of Acadiana in Lafayette LA, this was in The Lafayette Daily Advertiser yesterday.
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Are ‘Dogs Belt bound?
May 2, 2004

Now that Conference USA’s appetite has been satisfied with Friday’s addition of Texas-El Paso, let the posturing begin.

The rumor mills are churning out product once again, and the most notable regional rumor has Louisiana Tech involved in a return to the Sun Belt Conference. The Bulldogs left the Sun Belt three years ago to seek supposedly bluer skies in the Western Athletic Conference.

It was a good idea at the time, considering that the WAC included nearby members Rice, SMU and Tulsa. But that group bolted for Conference USA in January, leaving an 870-mile trip to UTEP as Tech’s closest league rival.

Now that the Miners are gone, the Bulldogs have to travel to the Continental Divide, Las Cruces and New Mexico State to reach the nearest conference location.

Want some cities closer to Ruston than Las Cruces? Try Minneapolis ... Green Bay ... Detroit ... Pittsburgh ... Colorado Springs. Even Sioux Falls, South Dakota, requires less travel mileage.

Tech made every effort to grab the available C-USA spot, and it didn’t happen. Had UTEP not accepted the invitation, C-USA presidents were prepared to stay with 11 teams, and take nobody instead of the Tech program.

A Tech release Friday stated that the Bulldogs pursued C-USA membership for “obvious geographical benefits.

HerdZoned,
I saw in another thread you from Lafayette. I read that article as well and honestly it makes more sense for LA Tech to come to the SBC than for 3 or 4 SBC teams to jump to the WAC. The WAC is on shaky ground right now as other WAC schools are looking to jump ship as well.

I posted it on the C-USA board last night, but notice not many WAC ppl actually go to the C-USA board. I just don't see it happening for 2-3 years. LA Tech going back to the SunBelt this early in their minds will seem like a failure to them. They would rather stay in the WAC and go backrupt and 3-8 lose every OOC game. I don't see them going back to the SunBelt till 08 or 09 if there is a SunBelt then. By that time Tech could have started to get back on track. Staying in the WAC they will fall behind 5-7 more years.

From checking their fan site their are a group of LA Tech fans who would rather go bankrupt in the WAC than rejoin the Sunbelt, however their are a few who know that rejoining the Sunbelt would allow them to save on travel costs and build their program. The question is do you humble yourself now and rejoin the Sunbelt or do you stick with the WAC and cripple yourself athletically for the next 10 years.

HerdZoned: Where do you see the WAC in the next 5 years?

RaginCajun77 Wrote:HerdZoned: Where do you see the WAC in the next 5 years?

Depends on what Benson pulls the trigger on. If he pulls a 12 team WAC off it will survive heathy. If not and the MWC decides to go to 12 it could be back to what it was when the MWC broke apart. If theres another round of Conf moves in 5-7 yrs the MWC could come in and try and steal Hawaii, Fresno St & Boise that will give them 12.

If SMU had not been part of C-USA this time I think Boise goes to the MWC. It's the most logical fit. But Alums at TCU wasn't going to let that happen. They play each other every year. Why not make it count.