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SoCalHoops College News Report

Is This A WACky Idea Or What?
WAC Considers New Alignment--(May 6,1998)

The Western Athletic Conference athletic directors met this last weekend and voted to make their big, 16-school conference more manageable by creating two permanent divisions and to abolish the much-maligned "quadrant system". The recommendation involves forming an Eastern Division and a Western Division beginning in 2000-01.

The vote will now be up to the WAC Presidents' Council to approve when they convene the first week in June. The league's presidents, who have final say in realignment issues, will either vote to adopt or strike down the recommendation. Or they could decide to implement another plan altogether. According to the scenario passed by the athletic directors, BYU and Utah will join Air Force, Fresno State, Hawaii, San Diego State, San Jose State and UNLV in the Western Division. Colorado State, New Mexico, Rice, Southern Methodist, Texas Christian, Tulsa, UTEP and Wyoming will comprise the Eastern Division.

The plan calls for football teams to play seven games against division opponents, and one "crossover" against a team from the other division. In basketball, teams will play a schedule of home-and-home games with no crossovers. This would mean, for example, that during the regular season, Fresno would not play New Mexico, and UNLV would not play TCU or Wyoming. It was unclear how the playoffs would work in determining a conference champion for NCAA tournament selection.

The idea of realigning the WAC is probably not so wacky after all, considering the league covers nine separate states and four different time zones. And with the addition in 1997 of the Texas schools (TCU, SMU, Rice) the conference became even more unwieldy, leading to the current "quadrant" alignment. It is thought that realignment will build stronger rivalries and reduce escalating travel costs in such a large and geographically disparate league. WAC leaders also hope the permanent divisions will erase much of the confusion for fans and media alike that has been generated by the rotating quadrants.

As expected, there was no consensus among the conference's 16 ADs. The "Front Range" schools — Colorado State, Wyoming and Air Force — do not want to be split up from schools such as BYU and Utah. But for BYU and Utah, being aligned with the West Coast schools would be great news, and would be even better news for those of us in SoCal, since it would at least give us the opportunity to see Utah and BYU regularly during the season. And California, and SoCal in particular, is fertile recruiting ground for the Cougars and Utes, so the new proposal is thought to be very beneficial to them.