(06-02-2015 10:12 AM)Germdawg Wrote: (06-02-2015 09:55 AM)MTPiKapp Wrote: (06-02-2015 08:28 AM)galojah Wrote: Things could always be worse:
1 - Wright Waters
1b - Karl Benson
I actually never much understood the the bashing of either one of those guys. I'm not saying either of them are great, but c'mon look at what they are/were working with. It's not been the comissioner holding back the Sun Belt, I'll say that much.
Wright Waters sold SBC tv rights for basically nothing (I think the schools get <50k if that a year)
Karl Benson single-handedly destroyed the WAC, he had Boise State after the Fiesta Bowl, Fresno, Hawaii, Nevada, and Tech all very good Mid-Majors and couldn't find a way to keep the conference together. At the 11th hour he tried to get MWC schools to defect but instead was blindsided by everyone leaving. He had no vision or foresight and did the head in the sand routine when rumors that could hurt the conference started bubbling up.
If either had been in charge during this fiasco the lines would have been similiar to this:
"We are monitoring the situation."
Or
We would have jumped the gun and invited someone and then looked dumb when UAB came back...
Regarding Wright Waters television deal I think it's pretty easy to just assume someone else could have done better, but really truly look at what he was selling in the early days and consider the time he was selling it in, there weren't half the networks there are now, weeknight games were limited to a few Thursday games a year total, hell ESPNU didn't even exist until 2005 and it took years to grow into what it is today. We were a group of schools mostly a decade or less removed from 1AA(which got even less exposure and respect then) and some long time 1A programs that had never had any real success like ULL, stAte and NMSU. Could someone else had done better? I suppose, but how much better could they have truly done and could the Sun Belt even afford to pay the man that could have truly sold that conference in that time?
Regarding Benson, I don't buy that he destroyed the WAC. His 11th hour plan may have done further harm, but what truly destroyed the WAC was a lack of viable candidates to backfill with. The WAC was good, but not good enough to hold together against the MWC and that's no fault of Benson's. Once Boise was out, there was zero hope(and I'm not sure how you think Benson should have convinced Boise to stay in a lesser conference with an instate rival they view as beneath them)but even through all of that if the WAC had the same number of FCS options in their footprint that the the Sun Belt does, they may have survived.
And I'm just not that sure the two situations are really all that analagous. With UAB's departure, CUSA was still in a position of strength with a half dozen or more SBC/FCS schools throwing themselves at us. We didn't panic and add anyone because our numbers were not dwindling and the loss of one middling member was not going make our waiting line of replacements sour on joining.
When Karl Benson was named SBC comissioner it was met with a mix of dread and mild optimism that he had to at least be an upgrade over Waters. I looked at his tenure in the WAC and saw that in 18 years 17 schools left for better conferences and the WAC kept on rolling until the end when there just was no one to backfill with. It may not have been the most encouraging news for the conference(but that's some pretty impressive longevity considering the turnover) but it was plenty encouraging for any member with upward mobility and sure enough less than a year later MT was CUSA bound!
To be clear, I don't actually attribute our move in any way to Benson, but if we were still in the Sun Belt I wouldn't be worried about the conference going the way of the WAC, primarily because I just don't see that much movement happening over our heads to trickle down and it's not as if they don't have outspoken replacements "ready"(in their own minds anyhow) and waiting for a call.
/
I'm starting to think that the C-USA commish is a genius
