Rebels to be part of eight-team WAC Western Division

UNLV appears to have found a permanent home in the Western Athletic Conference, and it's in the west.

If the plan voted by the WAC Council Sunday in Tucson is approved by the presidents next month in Monterey, Calif., the Rebels will be part of a permanent eight-team WAC Western Division that would include Air Force, Brigham Young, Fresno State, Hawaii, San Diego State, San Jose State and Utah.

The Eastern Division would have New Mexico, Texas-El Paso, Texas Christian, Rice, Southern Methodist, Colorado State, Wyoming and Tulsa.

The realignment is for football, men's and women's basketball and volleyball. If the presidents approve the council's recommendation, the new alignment will take effect for the 2000-2001 season. For the upcoming season and the 1999-2000 campaign, the Mountain and Pacific Divisions would remain intact.

That means for the next two years, UNLV will play Air Force, Colorado State, Wyoming, TCU, SMU, Rice and Tulsa.

"It's the best we could have hoped for," UNLV athletic director Charles Cavagnaro said. "It was certainly a significant vote.

"We wanted to be aligned with the California schools and it's a chance to get some stability in the conference and create and build some good rivalries."

Football coach Jeff Horton was thrilled.

"I'm ecstatic," he said. "With our heavy recruiting emphasis in California and Hawaii, this is really good for us.

"I think you'll see the BYU and Utah rivalries heat up and it'll renew the rivalry we have with Fresno and it will definitely increase our rivalry with Hawaii."

The vote was 13-3 with Air Force, Colorado State and Wyoming voting against the proposal. Air Force wanted to be aligned with the Front Range schools (CSU and Wyoming) and the Rams and Cowboys wanted to have a tie-in to California, especially for football, where recruiting is a major area of emphasis.

"There was a general consensus that divisional play had to be the answer," WAC associate commissioner Jeff Hurd said. "The main sticking point was how to do it."

Hurd said issues such as the conference postseason basketball tournament were tabled for future meetings, and that helped reduce the amount of dissent.

The other options were to maintain the status quo, have an East-West alignment with New Mexico and Colorado State in separate divisions or have a North-South setup which would have divided the WAC horizontally with UNLV playing in a North Division.

New Mexico was adamant about being in the same division as UTEP and the Miners wanted to be aligned with the four other Texas schools.

Assuming the presidents approve the plan, the WAC still has several key issues to deal with.

There is the matter of scheduling. The council will recommend that basketball retain the current 14-game format, meaning there would be no "crossover" games against an opponent in the other division. Each team would play its seven divisional opponents home-and-home.

The council also is prepared to expand the postseason men's and women's basketball tournaments to include all 16 teams. Currently only the top six from each division go to the WAC tourney.

For football, the plan would be to play eight league games, seven within the division plus one crossover. That might placate the Front Range schools, assuming they would play California teams with the crossover.

Volleyball is looking at a single round-robin, meaning each WAC school would play everyone once.

"We have time to get all of that done," Cavagnaro said. "The important thing was getting the divisions settled. But what excites me is that we've done this in an orderly fashion."

archive