Yoda Wrote:Quote:In the end, as has been discussed many times, the WAC-16 was a bloated monstrosity that was inevitably doomed from its creation, with the only issues being when it disintegrated and by what means.
I disagree with that. The problem with the WAC 16 wasn't its size but the fact that it encompassed three geographic subregions and those didn't fit into two rational divisions.
If 8 of the schools had been in each of two contiguous time zones, then the WAC 16 would be alive today. We wouldn't have had to go to rotating quads instead of fixed divisions and geographic rivalries would have been maintained.
Yoda out...
In theory, your concept of two 8-team divisions sounds good. Implementing would have been every bit as nightmarish as the quads.
Let's start with the two "ends," Central and Pacific/Hawaii time zones. In the former, you'd have TCU, SMU, Rice and Tulsa. In the latter, you'd have Hawaii, SDSU, FSU, SJSU and UNLV.
So far, so good. How would you break up the remaining 7 teams? If you put BYU, Utah and Wyoming in with the Pacific timezone, you've just killed the Border War, which is unacceptable. If you put BYU, Utah and New Mexico in the Pacific, you've wiped out those schools playing Air Force, CSU and Wyoming, another nonstarter, since Wyoming is BYU's second oldest rivalry. IOW, there was no way to keep BYU, Utah, CSU, Wyoming, Air Force and New Mexico together without creating a second division that spread from Texas to Hawaii, which was also unacceptable.
I don't see a viable way to make the split, not to mention the other fatal problem: Too many hungry mouths and too little tv and bowl revenue. It's worth noting that BYU, which has always run its athletic program in the black or at a break even point, incurred its first red ink in 1996, despite going to the Cotton Bowl.