(01-19-2015 03:39 PM)AntiG Wrote:  Because they've always been the premier power and money conferences in football since basically their inception in the early years of college football.

So why isn't it correct to say that the real reason the WAC was excluded from the Bowl Coalition is that its members were not premier power and money teams?

(01-19-2015 03:42 PM)MplsBison Wrote:  

(01-19-2015 03:39 PM)AntiG Wrote:  Because they've always been the premier power and money conferences in football since basically their inception in the early years of college football.

So why isn't it correct to say that the real reason the WAC was excluded from the Bowl Coalition is that its members were not premier power and money teams?

Wasn't that the real reason behind it? Other than BYU, none of them really "mattered" from that standpoint, hence why till this day none of them outside of Utah has gotten into the PAC. You'd think if anything, BYU and SJ State would have with their long history with Stanford and Cal; and SD State because they are a good program for a good school.

(01-19-2015 04:00 PM)AntiG Wrote:  Wasn't that the real reason behind it? Other than BYU, none of them really "mattered" from that standpoint, hence why till this day none of them outside of Utah has gotten into the PAC. You'd think if anything, BYU and SJ State would have with their long history with Stanford and Cal; and SD State because they are a good program for a good school.

Well if you read the post I was quoting, he's saying it's because the Holiday bowl was playing B1G teams.

(01-19-2015 03:34 PM)MplsBison Wrote:  

(01-18-2015 04:19 AM)Kittonhead Wrote:  I watched both Miami and BYU in the 80's and what was different back then is that your status in the football world was dictated by TV. Only the big time programs were on television so if you were on television you were viewed as big time program.

Schools were in conferences back then but the public didn't care or was that aware of who was in what conference. Especially schools that were not in their region. It was no more notable than the brand of your dress shoe.

The WAC was part of the CFA with Independents, Big East, SWC, ACC and SEC. The MAC and Big West were not part of the CFA. They were the mid majors while the CFA schools were the majors. There was a scramble to get on board one of the CFA conferences.

SEC (South Carolina, Arkansas)
ACC (Florida State)
Big East (formed from 8 independents)
WAC (Fresno State and Hawaii)

The WAC expanded with the 2 highest attended, most major conference ready schools in Fresno State and Hawaii. Attendance in the WAC was about 35,000 at the time similar to the Big East and ACC (minus FSU). Then why did they not get included in the coalition/alliance and BCS?

Coalition Bowls (92-94)

Tier 1: Orange (B8), Sugar (SEC), Cotton (SWC)
Tier 2: Gator, Sun, Blockbuster

At Large Conferences (ACC, Big East)

The Holiday bowl was not part of the Bowl Coalition where the WAC champ played against the B1G. It may be due to the B1G affiliation that the Holiday Bowl was not selected

In 1995 the Holiday Bowl became a WAC-B8 matchup with the WAC champ splitting between there and the Cotton Bowl. However, the Cotton was not part of the Bowl Alliance of 1995-96 which was only the Sugar, Orange and Fiesta.

The conclusion is that with the B1G/PAC on the outside of the mainstream of the college bowl postseason due to not being in the CFA, and the WAC while in the CFA staking its fortunes in aligning its champ against the B1G in the Holiday tied itself to the wrong conference to be included in the coalition.

The answer of why the WAC didn't make it as a power conference then wasn't something that was an intentional network decision or a power broker decision. They were a legitimate big time conference with a footprint worth coverage. It had to do with that in the early days of the coalition/alliance bowls they played the B1G/PAC instead and then backfilled with the Cotton for a couple of years when there was still a split championship landscape.

The Big East tied its future to Miami's program and its ability to be a significant draw to the florida based bowls of the bowl coalition. They ended up (at least then) on the right side of college football history as the coalition/alliance/BCS evolved to make the Orange Bowl a key bowl. Having the SWC-B8 merge helped open up room for their conference because that no longer tied the B8 champ to the Orange Bowl.

The WAC could see the door closing and scrambled to stay in the game adding in former SWC schools. The intent was to be part of the championship picture. Then they were told its quality not quantity that mattered and the MWC split that had the purpose of making the conference look BCS worthy made the situation worse because it nixed the decent bowl contracts the WAC-16 had, with the MWC basically starting over with its champ in the Las Vegas Bowl.

Then it was 4-5 years of BCS hype where the recruiting advantages of playing in a BCS conference began to take hold. That lifted previously weak PAC football programs over MWC programs in the recruiting wars. Performance and attendance started to drop off at MWC schools with support numbers that are more mid major.

BYU, TCU and Utah's steamroll through the MWC had a lot to do with the bottom falling out of the UNLV, New Mexico and Colorado St programs. The MWC originally deep became top heavy. The top heavy programs then departed to be replaced by 6 WAC 2.0 programs (Hawaii, Fresno, SJSU, Nevada, Boise, Utah St) to make it into more of a MAC style regional conference. The white flag for the Mountain Time Zone schools has now been raised.

If the WAC's Holiday bowl being played against the B1G is ultimately what kept them from being included in the Bowl Coalition, then why were the B1G and PAC allowed to jump into the BCS?

The WAC was included in the CFA as a western presence which didn't exist with the PAC not part of the CFA. That put them squarely in the major conference conversation with a TV deal that had a 1 million per school payout. The first midweek ESPN game was BYU vs. Pittsburgh in 1984.

The CFA package was a great hit. I can remember watching Miami, BYU, Boston College on it...a bunch of programs that had little exposure previously. BC played Holy Cross every year until 1987 and wasn't considered a major program before the CFA deal. It was a new generation of programs in flashy markets.

There was a schism from the early 80's to early 90's post the Oklahoma vs. NCAA ruling with the B1G/PAC in one camp and the CFA in the other. The Holiday Bowl during these years was WAC-B1G but viewed as a B1G bowl, therefore wasn't included in the early 90's. By the mid 90's the bowl alliance streamlined their post season structure into just 3 bowls (Fiesta, Orange, Sugar) and started reaching out to the B1G/PAC to test the waters.

So I'm rehashing some of the material here but the CFA always wanted the B1G/PAC and their Rose Bowl like the US has always wanted to trade with Cuba but hasn't because of politics.

There was a lot of reforms in college athletics in the 90's, notably scholarship reductions, weighted voting for BCS conferences, the definition of a conference as an all sport home. More recruiting rules in place. That is what the B1G/PAC wanted to see to check the Southern football schools and they are doing more of it with the full cost of attendance and high risk medical insurance to prevent over signing. The two sides (BIG/PAC, CFA) started working together and the B1G/PAC started playing the network TV game and learned that it wasn't so bad.

Including the Rose and B1G/PAC legitimized the BCS. The WAC was viewed as a major conference with programs that in many ways had the stature of ACC and BE programs. The WAC-16 was a 4-5 bid NCAA basketball conference too with Tulsa and UNLV added. The dynamic which made them important to the CFA as the western conference was not there with the BCS. The dyanamic that was important to the Big East being included in the bowl coalition with its 3 Fl based games by having Miami was not in place for the WAC.

The WAC thought that tie-in to the Cotton was going to be their ticket into the organized post-season. The PAC didn't need a ticket to the organized post season; their inclusion legitimized it. In the same vain, the SEC has to be included in an organized post season to make it viable but the ACC and the Big East had tickets in with Florida St and Miami.

The dynamics between the WAC champ playing all the way out in San Diego in the Holiday bowl vs. B1G and the Cotton Bowl losing status with an outdated stadium made the conference a day late and a dollar short.......

(01-18-2015 06:35 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  TV was a significant factor.

I know that CBS offered a significant amount of money for an all-sports eastern conference, which was part of the drive to create the BEFC as a compromise. So I have to think that the BEFC got a good TV contract from the beginning. Meanwhile the 16 team WAC got a contract that paid either the same as the CFA contract paid the 10-team '80s WAC, or the same per team.

Another thing to consider is that almost nobody in the WAC-16 had been to a major bowl in recent memory. Looking at the scoreboard in 1998:
BYU 1984 Holiday Bowl (National Championship Game)
SMU 4 Cotton Bowls, 1 Rose Bowl, last in 1982

So 2 WAC-16 teams had been to a big-time bowl in the last 20 years, and one of those was Death Penalty U and one of those was only "major" because BYU was No. 1.

The Big East Football Conference
Miami 12 straight major bowls 1984-95 if you count the Cotton.
Syracuse Sugar Bowl 1987, Fiesta 1997, Orange 1998
Pitt 1982 Cotton Bowl
BC 1984 Cotton Bowl
Virginia TEch 1995 Sugar, 1996 Orange
West Virginia 1988 Fiesta Bowl, 1993 Sugar Bowl

So whether you're looking at the formation of the Bowl Alliance or Coalition or the BCS, the BEFC was a group of schools that had been in the national spotlight in the last generation. The WAC schools mostly hadn't been.

You forgot BYU's cotton and citrus bowls in the mid 90's

(01-17-2015 01:40 AM)billybobby777 Wrote:  My question is more about the conferences picked, and the ones included:
Before the SWC disbanded, historically there were 5 "power leagues" up until around 1990 the longstanding traditionally recognized 5 were:
-big 10
-PAC 10
-SWC
-SEC
-Big 8
There were a handful of what they called major independents, most notably penn st, Miami and Florida St
The ACC consisted of 8 mostly basketball schools that looking back was not quite a power football conference yet and definitely weren't as strong as those 5 football conference powers. They did have a few Yearly bowls they had bids to most notably the Peach Bowl. The WAC was in a similar spot with 9 schools (lost AZ, AZ St a decade earlier) and had the Holiday bowl which BYU played in almost every year vs the 2nd or 3rd place big 10 team, and had the liberty bowl for Air Force, and Copper and Liberty Bowls vs "power school opponents"
Fast forward to summer of 98. SWC is gone and their schools have merged into the big 8 and WAC. The big 3 indies have joined leagues. Now in 98 there's not 4 power conferences, there's 6. FSU legitimized ACC making them 5th and Miami helps make the BE 6th when they joined also allowing the BE to sponsor football. Why was WAC excluded? Big 12 and SEC blocked them? I've always wondered about how the Big East made the cut (with some of the worst programs in the country) and the WAC didn't. That BCS decision destroyed their once solid league. The WAC/BE inclusions/exclusions seem odd even now. Any thoughts?

1998 was not the key year. The key year was 1992 with the formation of the Bowl Coalition. The Bowl Coalition is essentially the first iteration of the BCS/CFP. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowl_Coalition

The early 1990's saw a major realignment not dissimilar to the one that we have recently experienced. The reallignment was driven largely by TV rights, which had shifted from the NCAA to individual conferences. During the 1980's, college football had been heavily dominated by independent schools. By 1992, most major independents had committed to conferences. In addition, turmoil in the SWC led to Arkansas being picked off by the SEC and ultimately four Texas schools joining with the Big 8 to form the Big 12 in 1996.

The Bowl Coalition was formed by the Big East, SEC, Big 8, SWC, ACC and Notre Dame. They guaranteed places for the champions of each conference in a major bowl, with the SEC, Big 8 and SWC champions committed to the Sugar, Orange and Cotton, respectively, and the ACC and Big East champions guaranteed the Sugar, Orange, Cotton or Fiesta.

It also provided for the highest ranked school not committed to contract bowl (i.e. from the Big East, ACC, independent, or conference runner up) to play the highest ranked school committed to a contract bowl (i.e., the SEC, SWC or Big 8). Alternatively, if the two highest ranked schools were not committed to a contract bowl, they would have played in the Fiesta. This was largely in response to the fact that 1990 and 1991 had both been split national championships.

Major credit for the creation of the Bowl Coalition goes to Mike Tranghese, Commissioner of the Big East. Essentially, at the time of formation of the Big East, he wanted to guaranty the Big East champion access to a major bowl. He might have been able to arrange something directly with the Fiesta Bowl, but he was incredibly creative in imagining a system that would provide floating access to a group of major bowls that would also increase the chance of a national championship game matchup. He also did an incredible job "herding cats" by getting all of these conferences and bowls to buy in to his vision. His importance to the process at that time is reflected by his presence today on the CFP Selection Committee.

Notably, the Big East placed two schools in tier 1 bowls in each of the first two seasons of the Bowl Coalition, having two top 10 schools each year.

(01-19-2015 09:44 PM)Kittonhead Wrote:  The WAC was included in the CFA as a western presence which didn't exist with the PAC not part of the CFA. That put them squarely in the major conference conversation with a TV deal that had a 1 million per school payout. The first midweek ESPN game was BYU vs. Pittsburgh in 1984.

The CFA package was a great hit. I can remember watching Miami, BYU, Boston College on it...a bunch of programs that had little exposure previously. BC played Holy Cross every year until 1987 and wasn't considered a major program before the CFA deal. It was a new generation of programs in flashy markets.

There was a schism from the early 80's to early 90's post the Oklahoma vs. NCAA ruling with the B1G/PAC in one camp and the CFA in the other. The Holiday Bowl during these years was WAC-B1G but viewed as a B1G bowl, therefore wasn't included in the early 90's. By the mid 90's the bowl alliance streamlined their post season structure into just 3 bowls (Fiesta, Orange, Sugar) and started reaching out to the B1G/PAC to test the waters.

So I'm rehashing some of the material here but the CFA always wanted the B1G/PAC and their Rose Bowl like the US has always wanted to trade with Cuba but hasn't because of politics.

There was a lot of reforms in college athletics in the 90's, notably scholarship reductions, weighted voting for BCS conferences, the definition of a conference as an all sport home. More recruiting rules in place. That is what the B1G/PAC wanted to see to check the Southern football schools and they are doing more of it with the full cost of attendance and high risk medical insurance to prevent over signing. The two sides (BIG/PAC, CFA) started working together and the B1G/PAC started playing the network TV game and learned that it wasn't so bad.

Including the Rose and B1G/PAC legitimized the BCS. The WAC was viewed as a major conference with programs that in many ways had the stature of ACC and BE programs. The WAC-16 was a 4-5 bid NCAA basketball conference too with Tulsa and UNLV added. The dynamic which made them important to the CFA as the western conference was not there with the BCS. The dyanamic that was important to the Big East being included in the bowl coalition with its 3 Fl based games by having Miami was not in place for the WAC.

The WAC thought that tie-in to the Cotton was going to be their ticket into the organized post-season. The PAC didn't need a ticket to the organized post season; their inclusion legitimized it. In the same vain, the SEC has to be included in an organized post season to make it viable but the ACC and the Big East had tickets in with Florida St and Miami.

The dynamics between the WAC champ playing all the way out in San Diego in the Holiday bowl vs. B1G and the Cotton Bowl losing status with an outdated stadium made the conference a day late and a dollar short.......

So to conclude, it only seems like the WAC had a seat at the table because the PAC wasn't at the table when the Coalition formed.

Thanks for the posts!

(01-20-2015 01:23 PM)MplsBison Wrote:  

(01-19-2015 09:44 PM)Kittonhead Wrote:  The WAC was included in the CFA as a western presence which didn't exist with the PAC not part of the CFA. That put them squarely in the major conference conversation with a TV deal that had a 1 million per school payout. The first midweek ESPN game was BYU vs. Pittsburgh in 1984.

The CFA package was a great hit. I can remember watching Miami, BYU, Boston College on it...a bunch of programs that had little exposure previously. BC played Holy Cross every year until 1987 and wasn't considered a major program before the CFA deal. It was a new generation of programs in flashy markets.

There was a schism from the early 80's to early 90's post the Oklahoma vs. NCAA ruling with the B1G/PAC in one camp and the CFA in the other. The Holiday Bowl during these years was WAC-B1G but viewed as a B1G bowl, therefore wasn't included in the early 90's. By the mid 90's the bowl alliance streamlined their post season structure into just 3 bowls (Fiesta, Orange, Sugar) and started reaching out to the B1G/PAC to test the waters.

So I'm rehashing some of the material here but the CFA always wanted the B1G/PAC and their Rose Bowl like the US has always wanted to trade with Cuba but hasn't because of politics.

There was a lot of reforms in college athletics in the 90's, notably scholarship reductions, weighted voting for BCS conferences, the definition of a conference as an all sport home. More recruiting rules in place. That is what the B1G/PAC wanted to see to check the Southern football schools and they are doing more of it with the full cost of attendance and high risk medical insurance to prevent over signing. The two sides (BIG/PAC, CFA) started working together and the B1G/PAC started playing the network TV game and learned that it wasn't so bad.

Including the Rose and B1G/PAC legitimized the BCS. The WAC was viewed as a major conference with programs that in many ways had the stature of ACC and BE programs. The WAC-16 was a 4-5 bid NCAA basketball conference too with Tulsa and UNLV added. The dynamic which made them important to the CFA as the western conference was not there with the BCS. The dyanamic that was important to the Big East being included in the bowl coalition with its 3 Fl based games by having Miami was not in place for the WAC.

The WAC thought that tie-in to the Cotton was going to be their ticket into the organized post-season. The PAC didn't need a ticket to the organized post season; their inclusion legitimized it. In the same vain, the SEC has to be included in an organized post season to make it viable but the ACC and the Big East had tickets in with Florida St and Miami.

The dynamics between the WAC champ playing all the way out in San Diego in the Holiday bowl vs. B1G and the Cotton Bowl losing status with an outdated stadium made the conference a day late and a dollar short.......

So to conclude, it only seems like the WAC had a seat at the table because the PAC wasn't at the table when the Coalition formed.

Thanks for the posts!

You mean the WAC had a seat at the CFA when the PAC was not part of it.

CFA included only major conferences and major independents. Big West and MAC were not part of it. Schools like Southern Miss and East Carolina were part of it, hence their elevated status in the college football world at the time.

The CFA TV contract paid out 1 million per school, hence the basis for the 1 million per school TV contract for the G5 school. That is what WAC and Southern Independent schools were making back in the 80's.

The only G5 that has significantly elevated its place at the table is the MAC. The MAC was 1 minor bowl bid and no TV until about the year 2000. Now it has a TV deal that is comparable in payout in CUSA and worth 125 million over the life of its contract. Also some major bowl access where there was none before.