That Will Do

The MWCUSA? Benson's Vision Lives

Readers: I originally posted this in August of last year and had dusted it off Sunday, when I heard insiders in Oklahoma discussing expansion to the Pac-12 bring up the concept of four-team pods.

Gee, where have we heard that before?

At any rate, I thought it was a novelty. Until today, when I read this:

So now, I think it's pertinent to re-post this blog. I think it should happen because pro-active is the only way to be in these cut-throat times.

~~~

Karl Benson was ahead of his time.

As talk of a Mountain West-Conference USA superconference still hangs in the air, it's only showing that the longtime, nicest but most-victimized conference commissioner in sports was 15 years ahead of his time. 

Remember 1995? The Southwest Conference had broken up. TCU, SMU and Rice were left swaying in the breeze like Kansas, Kansas State and Iowa State were close to being this year -- at the hands of the same schools. 

The University of Houston forged ahead to Conference USA, which was making a name for itself as a strong Midwest basketball conference that played football, too.

In stepped Benson and the Western Athletic Conference with a vision to help its own, the SWC leftovers and others.

Tulsa dumped the Missouri Valley Conference, UNLV and San Jose State jumped out of the PCAA/Big West and everyone joined a four-team pod with the rest of the WhAC to fulfill Benson's vision of the nation's first superconference -- simultaneously a way to insulate against upheaval, upgrade programs, gain stature and...

"This just in from Denver International Airport..."

Turns out everybody was down with the WAC except the WAC. Founding members Brigham Young, Wyoming and Utah, along with Colorado State and Air Force, didn't buy in to Benson's brainchild. Their athletic directors met for an airport hook-up that would make Larry Craig jealous. The tryst produced a bastard child -- the Mountain West.

The WAC got three seasons of pods, 1996-98, before the MWC was born in 1999.

And now, look.

Maybe Benson didn't dream big enough. The rumored merger between the Mountain West and Conference USA would create a 20-team league -- four louder than Benson's WAC vision.

No, the real reason it didn't work before was high rent with low return -- lots of costly cross-country travel, and the DIA Five were destined for shuffled pods, ruining money-making rivalry games against each other.

There hadn't been such an unwieldy, spread out, dour and downtrodden group since the fall of the Soviet Union.

But the 2010 incarnation? Capitalism at its finest.

That's because the winner of this pigskin polyglot would be in the Bowl Championship Series.

Sure would make a road trip from Fresno, CA, to Greensboro, NC, a lot easier to take.

Conference people: do this!

Enough bouncing around trying to out-hustle the other downtrodden non-BCS football conferences, especially since many consider superconferences to be college sports' destiny, anyway. 

Why not grab the bull by the horns, be the first, set the tone and carpe the flippin' diem?

The hard part falls to C-USA commish Britton Banowsky. If the conferences combine, it will be his unpleasant task to jettison Tulane, Rice, Marshall and UAB -- three private schools and a football afterthought, though that's not necessarily UAB's fault.

Memphis gets in because of its basketball. UTEP gets in because it's in Texas and draws fans. San Diego State gets in for the road trip.

The thinking is now that Banowsky and MWC commissioner Craig Thompson will hedge their bets and have an end-of-season showdown between both conference champions to determine who gets BCS glory.

Even so, the sacrifice is C-USA's to make. The conference already has a championship game while the MWC only just became big enough to hold one. Likely, they wouldn't try to while C-USA would get rid of its title contest so as to not wear down the league champ.

But it says here that the time is now for the MWCUSA.

Keep an eye on September 1. That's the day BYU must announce if it's in or out of the Mountain West. 

If BYU stays, in the words of Sherlock Holmes, "The game is afoot."

A Legend’s Asterisk: Paterno Not Above His Own Law [OPINION]

Ready for A College Football Playoff? Ready for Irrelevance?

There is a growing din in college football, amplified over millions of brightly lit TV screens, computer monitors and phones, all braying a simple message: Playoffs good. Bowls bad.

Bowl games will suck away the school coffers if fans don't buy their allotment of seats. Bowl games exist for a few lucky fat cats to wear ridiculous blazers and rake in six-figure salaries to glad-hand their way around college football. The sport's landscape is littered with too many bowl games.

Playoffs would make more money for athletic departments crushed by budget demands and Title IX. Playoffs would benefit schools and conferences directly, cutting out those ridiculous blazers and six-figure salaries altogether. Playoffs are more fair.

Playoffs are more fair for the fairest of them all, which would leave the ugliest campuses to scratch and claw for a non-existent shot at a glass slipper.

Enough about Cinderella...for now.

The thing about that simple message is that there's a lot of truth there. But not THE truth.

The greater truth is, college football's inevitable march to a playoff will come at the cost of reducing more and more campuses to the derisive term used by some Californians and New Yorkers to describe everything else in between them: flyover country.

As college football stands now there are BCS haves and have-nots, and those at the top are already trying to isolate themselves. A playoff would seal the deal.

If you're a fan or an alum of a school that doesn't have a Bowl Championship Series bid, ask yourself this question: Do you really think the conferences and schools that invented the BCS would invite the sport's smallest names to a playoff party?

Keep in mind, making things "fair" like the inclusive NCAA basketball tournament (where there is still controversy over who gets left out, even with 68 teams) is not a requirement for any who would fashion a football playoff, because the NCAA has nothing to do with college football. Nobody has to lift a finger to help the little guys. 

Inclusiveness would just mean everyone's slice of pie is that much thinner.

Interestingly, as BCS schools hold the line, the clamor for a playoff only gets louder. BCS-bashing books get published. Congress rattles its dull ceremonial saber.

You wonder if that's the plan. Let them eat cake...until the time is right. Then, if your program is wearing the proper school tie, stand in the reception line to receive the praises of media and fans alike for finally seeing the playoff light.

When it happens -- for those uninvited schools and the bowls, too -- pack it in. Bowl sponsorships will shrivel and die, and so will the good bowls (the ones not owned by ESPN), killing incentive for prospective teams whose regular seasons would also mean exponentially less.

Not every bowl game is the Fiesta Bowl and not every executive director is John Junker. Not every bowl has access to its choice of some of the country's best golf resorts to woo college presidents, athletic directors and coaches. Not to mention Junker's bottomless expense account to pay off crooked politicians, because not every pol-on-the-make can be bribed as cheaply as El Paso's can.

There are great bowl associations, like the Sun Bowl Association, that brighten a community with any number of events, big and small. The college All-America golf classic, a growing youth soccer tournament, the Holiday basketball tournament, the Thanksgiving Day parade -- all of these would disappear without the event for which the association is named.

Frankly, El Paso needs to do all it can to keep and improve what it has.

I don't believe the BCS is the end-all be-all for college football. It, too, is an imperfect system; but it's a darn sight better than what was there before.

It's ironic -- no, hypocritical -- that schools like Boise State rail against the unfairness of the system but leap at the first chance to join a BCS conference offering absolutely no geographic rivalries. Let's see how the Broncos' California recruits feel about playing their road games three time zones away from their hometowns.

I don't say this lightly: the BCS made Boise State what it is. It has its Big East invitation because of one-off bowl games where it slew Oklahoma and TCU and made millions.

And TCU a Rose Bowl champion? Utah with a Sugar Bowl win over Alabama? Thank you, BCS! It's great to be in the Big XII and Pac-12, nowadays, isn't it?

But a playoff? Making a school like Boise run a four-game playoff gauntlet would be forcing Cinderella to stay at the ball after midnight for her dance with the Prince. She'd be exposed before His Majesty could see her toes through the glass slipper.

If it has been 26 years and counting since the last real Cinderella (Villanova, 1985) won the NCAA basketball tournament -- and winning is the only object of a tournament -- no way Cindy ever shines in a football playoff.

One player can change the destiny of a team in basketball (see: Danny Manning, 1988). Football is very different -- much more a team game, because every player has a fairly specific role to play.

This means you might sneak up on a team once. But three or four times? You would need depth to replace injured players, skill and speed to match your opponent's.

In other words, you would have to be good. And if you're good, you're not Cinderella.

You think the SEC wins too much now? Should college football go to a full playoff, I can see an all-SEC championship game more often than not.

The comparisons with the excitement of March Madness are inevitable. But part of the NCAA Tournament's allure are the 68 story lines at the beginning, and that the math of so large a tournament dictates there WILL be big upsets. It's engineered that way.

At maximum, a football playoff could only take 16 teams. That would be fair -- take every conference champ and a handful of at-large teams.

But a playoff won't be fair. We see that plenty now.

Look! Up in the sky! Is it a bird? 

No, it's the contrail of Alabama's chartered jet.

Conference Expansion & UTEP: Doesn't Matter in the Big LEast [VIDEO]

The title of our discussion today, "Big East Expansion: So What?"

Over the last couple of months, there has been some concern over UTEP's place in the conference realignment picture as the Big East raids Conference USA and the Mountain West Conference.

It's safe to say that, while college football's winds blow the piles of BCS and television cash to this conference and that school, the Miners must wait for the dust to settle. But as the Big East huffs and puffs to keep its own house from blowing down, it might not affect UTEP nearly as much as you'd think.

A small review is in order.

In an effort to stave off the schoolyard bully who was already making overtures to some of their teams, Conference USA and the Mountain West tried inviting the Big East to the bargaining table.

The idea was to combine forces with what would have been a five-team Big East on the verge of BCS irrelevance to create a national conference assured of a BCS berth and good TV money, because its schools would be everywhere.

But "on the verge" could also be read "cornered". Never a good thing when dealing with any animal, person or conference facing its demise.

The Big East thought the idea of a national conference was so good, it procured the concept for itself. The conference went from coming after the likes of C-USA's Houston and Central Florida toinviting Boise State and San Diego State of the MWC, too.

All this as SMU put on a red light and called itself Roxanne outside Big East headquarters.

It pays to advertise. SMU got an invitation, along with UH and UCF.

How did they get there? Case Keenum and coach Kevin Sumlin led Houston, having taken the program to a higher plane as they exit. But will there be buyer's remorse for the Cougars' new conference with no Case Keenum and Kevin Sumlin?

Meanwhile, SMU is dancing like an NFL rookie with his first tackle in an exhibition game after getting an invite to a BCS conference.

The Ponies had to flex the pile of alumni money behind them to make up for muscle they don't have. But in the end, SMU is Big East-bound, and it can crow to its heart's content that it has a program to match TCU's. You can read all about it on page 12 of the Dallas Morning-News sports section, right above the ads for topless bars.

UCF is the most natural move of the bunch, finally joining South Florida in the same conference to kick off a directional school version of Florida State-Miami.

Inexplicably -- and unsustainably -- the Big East has also added Boise and SDSU.

It wanted to add Air Force and Navy, but we're glad to see nine years of armed conflict overseas has taught somebody in our service academies a little about travel expense.

Air Force and Navy are staying put.

Here's where the MWC and C-USA together with the Big East would have been a solid football solution: Boise State would have had Nevada and has Wyoming and Colorado State as nearby conference rivals in the MWC. San Diego State has UNLV and would have had Fresno State.

In the Big East, the Broncos and Aztecs will be each other's closest rivalry.

Yes, jet travel makes the idea of a national football conference workable, but regional rivalry is what makes conferences viable, as UTEP has found out since being left behind by the Mountain West.

Now, as the Miners are being left behind by their closest rivals in Houston and Dallas, it appears that UTEP will get to renew many of its older and oldest conference rivalries.

The Mountain West-Conference USA merger is still on, and now appears to be an all-sports package.

Who doesn't want to see UTEP-New Mexico go head-to-head in basketball again? Other than Steve Alford, that is.

The Miners and Nevada had developed a solid distaste for each other before UTEP left the Western Athletic Conference for C-USA. El Paso may get to see if there's any spark left with the Wolfpack as early as next year.

Plus, Rice stays a part of the conference picture for Texas recruiting and as a rallying point for those El Pasoans and UTEP grads who moved east.

Speaking of: put me down for bringing UTSA into the conference if Larry Coker is able to get the Roadrunners' football program moving. San Antonio may be home to more ex-El Pasoans than any other city in Texas; and both cities have that sweet-and-sour mix of being the same but different that could make this one of UTEP's biggest rivalries. Someday.

As for those who would whine about the Miners not being proactive: where would you have them go, the Sun Belt? Back to the WhACk?

UTEP had no options, here. The program is too poor and geographically isolated to have called any shots in this round of conference shuffling. The Miners had to wait for the hand fate dealt them.

Turns out, it's coming up aces.

 

Conference USA and the Mountain West Had a Great Idea. Too Bad They Told the Big East. [VIDEO]

Conference USA and the Mountain West had a great idea -- get together and form a nationwide football-only super-conference that was sure to get an automatic BCS bid for its champion and good TV money. Only problem was, they talked to the Big East about it. Losing teams and in danger of losing its automatic bid, the Big East decided to procure the idea for themselves...along with the best football schools from the MWC and C-USA. So long, suckas!  

Is It Time for a Change at UTEP? [OPINION]

 

Yoda-ling: UTEP's Price Challenges Miners, Fans: 'There Is No Try' [VIDEO]

UTEP head football coach Mike Price might be a little loopy from the medication he's on for a slight respiratory infection, but he's still effective when he channels his inner Yoda.

He also knows a good beat down when he sees one, and he saw his Miners deliver one last Saturday. UTEP downed Conference USA foe Tulane, 44-7, ripping the Green Wave in all three facets of the game.

But the Mountain West's Colorado State Rams come to town for homecoming Saturday at 6 p.m. MDT, and with both teams sporting 3-3 records, there's no reason to get cocky.

Getting in the media's face -- literally -- to get people out to the game? That's a different story, bringing to mind another veteran leader.

First, Price reviews the Tulane game...

Price talks more about managing the game with a big lead against the Green Wave and begins to discuss Colorado State...

Finally, Price talks about the Miners against the Rams, then proceeds to go into the assembled media for an old-fashioned pep talk, exhorting El Paso writers and broadcasters, as did Yoda: "Do or do not. There is no try..."

Ah, yes. Use the force, UTEP fans...

Miner Miscues Make Mike Mad

Well, he's probably as mad as we'll ever see him publicly, anyway. Perhaps a lot more disappointed than mad, as well he should be after his UTEP football team came close to beating the Houston Cougars. Two huge turnovers in the first half and poor tackling in big moments throughout the game was enough for a talented Houston team to beat the Miners, 49-42.

Who Wins in the Gunfight at the Big XII Corral?

It's High Noon in the Big XII. Go on, Texas. Keep staring down the school at the other end of Main Street.

The sun beats down as you feel the sweat roll into the corner of your eye. Pockets of dust swirl in a breeze like the Devil's kicking dirt as you feel your iron hanging heavy, slung low on your right hip.

Let your hand brush the ivory stock. It's nickel-plated, one of the finest pistols money could buy.

Goodness knows you have plenty of money these days. For whatever that could be worth in the next few minutes.

You've backed yourself into this moment of truth by being proud, and now there are only two ways out -- alive with no one able to look you in the eye, or in a pine box.

Nebraska had pride. So did Texas A&M. But they just found other work at other ranches. They saw where your pride was taking things and they wanted no part of it.

Colorado? Headed west. Saddled up and gone before sunrise last spring.

You'd hoped it might be Baylor that came after you, didn't you, Texas? Those Bears are cantankerous and a mite feisty these days. Baylor gets that way after a drink or two.

Nothing like the threat of losing work as a foreman at a big ranch to rile a school.

But, Texas, all you'd have had to do is cock an eyebrow, wait for the saloon to get quiet, and Baylor would've snuck out the back, the way it came in.

It isn't the Bears, though. It's Oklahoma.

The Sooners can't match your money, but they do have the name and they're quick on the draw.

You just wouldn't back down when OU tried to get everyone a better deal out West. Now, you've forced the Sooners' hand and pricked their pride.

Everyone had a laugh imagining the look on Colorado's face when you and OU rode onto the Pac-12 Ranch, but nope. You wanted your own brand and to keep all your own money.

Too much for the Pac-12 to deal with, so now there's no deal at all.

As it was, you were trying to force the other ranchhands to let you brand some of their cattle -- even some of their calves -- and you got the Big XII to go in with you on the idea.

There was a lot of grumbling, but that wasn't your concern. It's a hard land. Takes hard people to tame a hard land.

Things can sure change in a hurry, though. Those damned Okies have some of that pride, too.

Now look at the pair of you.

The telegraph operator keeps saying a new sheriff by the name of Chuck Neinas might be coming to help settle things. Could be amusing if he gets here before Sheriff Beebe rides out.

Then again, you haven't seen much of Beebe since he as much as sold you his stake in the Big XII when you nearly left last summer.

Word is Sheriff Neinas is a tough old hand. Hear he ran things when the Sooners worked for the Big 8.

But he isn't here, and you are. And so is Oklahoma at the other end of the street.

You'd like to think you could stare OU down. Maybe you could. Do you call the bluff?

What if you lose this draw, Texas? What if everybody just decides to leave you on your own? What if Oklahoma has other options?

ACC? SEC? Word is, those ranches are hiring.

That old buzzard up there sure is flying low. Speaking of old buzzards, wonder if Neinas will get here on the next stagecoa...

Wait, was that a flash?

RE-POSTING: The MWCUSA? Benson's Vision Lives

Readers: I originally posted this in August of last year and had dusted it off Sunday, when I heard insiders in Oklahoma discuss the Sooners probable move to the Pac-12 while bringing up the concept of four-team pods.

Gee, where have we heard that before?

At any rate, I thought it was a novelty. Until today, when I read this about the Mountain West and Conference USA trying to get the band back together.

So now, I think it's pertinent to re-post the whole blog about Karl Benson's original WAC vision, and combining the MWC and C-USA. It might not happen how I thought it would, but it should, because pro-active is the only way to be in these cut-throat times.

~    ~    ~

Karl Benson was ahead of his time.

As talk of a Mountain West-Conference USA superconference still hangs in the air, it's only showing that the longtime, nicest but most-victimized conference commissioner in sports was 15 years ahead of the game. 

Remember 1995? The Southwest Conference had broken up. TCU, SMU and Rice were left swaying in the breeze like Kansas, Kansas State and Iowa State were close to being this year -- at the hands of the same schools. 

The University of Houston forged ahead to Conference USA, which was making a name for itself as a strong Midwest basketball conference that played football, too.

In stepped Benson and the Western Athletic Conference with a vision to help its own, the SWC leftovers and others.

Tulsa dumped the Missouri Valley Conference, UNLV and San Jose State jumped out of the PCAA/Big West and everyone joined a four-team pod with the rest of the WhAC to fulfill Benson's vision of the nation's first superconference -- simultaneously a way to insulate against upheaval, upgrade programs, gain stature and...

"This just in from Denver International Airport..."

Turns out everybody was down with the WAC except the WAC. Founding members Brigham Young, Wyoming and Utah, along with Colorado State and Air Force, didn't buy in to Benson's brainchild. Their athletic directors met for an airport hook-up that would make Larry Craig jealous. The tryst produced a bastard child -- the Mountain West.

The WAC got three seasons of pods, 1996-98, before the MWC was born in 1999.

And now, look.

Maybe Benson didn't dream big enough. The rumored merger between the Mountain West and Conference USA would create a 20-team league -- four louder than Benson's WAC vision.

No, the real reason it didn't work before was high rent with low return -- lots of costly cross-country travel, and the DIA Five were destined for shuffled pods, ruining money-making rivalry games against each other.

There hadn't been such an unwieldy, spread out, dour and downtrodden group since the fall of the Soviet Union.

But the 2010 incarnation? Capitalism at its finest.

That's because the winner of this pigskin polyglot would be in the Bowl Championship Series.

Sure would make a road trip from Fresno, CA, to Greensboro, NC, a lot easier to take.

Conference people: do this!

Enough bouncing around trying to out-hustle the other downtrodden non-BCS football conferences, especially since many consider superconferences to be college sports' destiny, anyway. 

Why not grab the bull by the horns, be the first, set the tone and carpe the flippin' diem?

The hard part falls to C-USA commish Britton Banowsky. If the conferences combine, it will be his unpleasant task to jettison Tulane, Rice, Marshall and UAB -- three private schools and a football afterthought, though that's not necessarily UAB's fault.

Memphis gets in because of its basketball. UTEP gets in because it's in Texas and draws fans. San Diego State gets in for the road trip.

The thinking is now that Banowsky and MWC commissioner Craig Thompson will hedge their bets and have an end-of-season showdown between both conference champions to determine who gets BCS glory.

Even so, the sacrifice is C-USA's to make. The conference already has a championship game while the MWC still needs two more to hold one. Likely, they wouldn't try to while C-USA would get rid of its title contest so as to not wear down the league champ.

But it says here that the time is now for the MWCUSA.

Keep an eye on September 1. That's the day BYU must announce if it's in or out of the Mountain West. 

If BYU stays, in the words of Sherlock Holmes, "The game is afoot."

Price Rakes Over Coals of Win, Cracks Wise About USF

UTEP Miners’ head coach Mike Price was happy after his team’s 16-10 win over New Mexico State in the Battle of I-10.

The biggest play of the game was UTEP’s fake punt from their own 29-yard line on 4th-and-7 — a play called by special teams coordinator Jeff Banks. Price talked about presenting Banks with a pair of large plastic toy balls, one marked “PREPARATION”, the other “OPPORTUNITY”.

The Miners travel to play 17th-ranked South Florida in Tampa Saturday. The game will be televised on ESPN Gameplan and can be seen on ESPN3.com for Time Warner Cable subscribers.