Breaking Up The WAC

One-half of the 16-team Western Athletic Conference have announced their intention to leave the league and form a new conference.

Utah, New Mexico, Brigham Young, UNLV, Air Force, Colorado State, San Diego State and Wyoming said they will ask the NCAA to recognize the new conference immediately.

The other schools in the WAC are Texas-El Paso, Texas Christian, Fresno State, Tulsa, Hawaii, Southern Methodist, Rice and San Jose State.

A University of Utah news release said the schools "made their decision after concluding that the present 16-team conference has been unable to achieve its intended goals, and that the challenges faced by the conference are insurmountable."

The release said that the principal problems cited by the defecting schools include "a lack of any natural affinity" among the conference member teams, a breakdown in traditional rivalries, hefty travel expenses and the "inability of the present conference to achieve greater national recognition and TV revenues."

The release said the decision to leave the conference "was reached reluctantly."

Lee Bartlett, assistant to president of BYU for communications, confirmed the conference breakup.

Bartlett stressed this was not a movement solely pushed by one or two schools, but all eight together.

"It's very much a joint decision among these eight schools and the product of a lot of effort to find answers to questions that proved to be insurmountable."

Those questions involved "schedules, pairings, building and protecting rivalries.

"Any wat you slice it, there was never an answer that was satisfactory to all the members.

"There was a lack of affinity when you have schools so widely spread. They all may be wonderful schools, but its been more difficult than anticipated" to make the 16-team WAC work.

The conference became the largest college league in the nation in 1996, when it expanded to 16 teams. The teams were organized into two eight-team divisions, which ended some traditional rivalries of the 36-year-old conference.

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