UNLV opts to join up with seven schools and leave WAC

Money. It was always about the money.

From the moment UNLV was approached to join the Western Athletic Conference in 1994 to Tuesday, when the school opted to join seven others and secede from the WAC, the driving force was revenue.

With UNLV foundering in the cash-poor, low-level Big West, the WAC represented a pot o' gold at the end of the rainbow. The Rebels were going to be part of a 16-team super conference, one that would make the boys at the Bowl Alliance stand up and take notice, one that would make the TV guys redo their basketball schedules and load up those late-night slots on ESPN with Utah, Fresno State, New Mexico and, yes, UNLV.

It was the grandest of grand experiments.

Tuesday, the laboratory blew up. And commissioner Karl Benson, the lead scientist, is reeling from the impact of the blast.

The decision by UNLV to join Brigham Young, Colorado State, Air Force, Utah, New Mexico, San Diego State and Wyoming was a fairly easy one. The WAC, try as it did, simply couldn't deliver the goods.

It couldn't dent the Alliance. It wasn't able to land that super TV contract. It didn't have a team playing football on New Year's Day this year and, had it not been for Utah's improbable run to the NCAA basketball championship game, 1997-98 could have been a real financial disaster.

Those facts weren't lost on the conference members. And when the decision to go to permanent divisions earlier this month left some schools feeling like they were kicked in the gut, they fought back.

The veteran WAC schools held the hammer and they knew it. What was Rice or SMU doing for them?

The answer was obvious: "Who needed 'em?" And by bringing UNLV into the fold, "The Disgruntled Eight," for lack of a better name for the upstart league, became even stronger. Las Vegas -- geographically, athletically and politically -- was the conduit.

Southern Nevada is centrally located. You can fly to any destination within two hours, though it takes a little longer to get to Laramie. UNLV is fully represented with 16 sports, has made great strides with gender equity, has a viable men's basketball program once again and has been out of the NCAA's doghouse for a couple of years.

Politically, UNLV is important to the fledgling league as president Dr. Carol Harter serves on the NCAA's Board of Directors, the organization's policy-making body. She doesn't conclude her term for another three years, though it remains to be seen whether she is allowed to remain, now that her institution is bolting the WAC.

But it was always about the money.

In 1996, BYU had a 13-1 football team which was ranked No. 5 in the nation. Instead of going to one of the Alliance bowls for an $8 million WAC payday, the Cougars were snubbed and sent to the Cotton Bowl, where the take was just $2 million.

For the WAC, it was a $6 million hit, one the conference simply couldn't take and expect to survive in the long term. And when the Super Alliance kept the WAC at arm's length while escorting the Big Ten and the Pacific 10 down the golden path last fall, the WAC's obituary had begun to be written.

"There's no question that was one of the major issues," Harter said of the forces that drove "The Disgruntled Eight" to bail out. "Our revenues had not increased the way we projected them to."

UNLV athletic director Charles Cavagnaro said: "The WAC, as it was presently constructed, was not going to be in the hunt for the (Super) Alliance. That was made abundantly clear last fall."

When the WAC expanded, everyone feared the rising travel costs, especially for the non-revenue sports. Swimmers still had to fly to Texas to compete. Tennis players still had to go to Fresno for their matches. And you still can't drive to Hawaii to play softball.

So where was the money going to come from?

Not from the football power brokers. And not from television, either.

The WAC had cut a deal with ABC and ESPN to provide it with its most extensive coverage ever. But the revenue from those deals ($12 million) wasn't close to what other established conferences were getting.

So while the exposure may have been nice, save for games that started at 11 p.m. in Fort Worth, the WAC wasn't getting a whole lot richer. And the pie was now being sliced 16 ways instead of the 10 prior to expansion.

What was worse, teams that were going to bowl games came away losing money. Both BYU's Cotton Bowl appearance in '96 and Colorado State's Holiday Bowl experience last December wound up costing the schools rather than providing a nice payday.

"My biggest challenge was to create a financial source that was enough to satisfy 16 mouths," Benson said. "Obviously, we weren't able to do that."

And those mouths were damned if they would stay hungry. So to catch their own fish, the Disgruntled Eight used an old lure -- politics.

The meeting of the WAC Council in Tucson, Ariz., earlier this month was the perfect pond to nab a bite. One way or another, a decision on the future alignment of the conference was going to be made.

From UNLV's perspective, it didn't matter which way it went. Being centrally located, UNLV would be in good shape. But the politics bothered Air Force. It bothered New Mexico. It bothered Colorado State and Wyoming.

There had been some long-time rivalries built up among the old WAC schools. Wyoming and CSU not play Air Force? Preposterous. New Mexico not meet BYU and Utah? No way.

They had the ball. They had the court. And they had the players. So when the decision was made to move them off the main court, they protested. But they quickly wised up and proceeded to establish their own main court.

And that caught Benson off guard.

"I obviously knew there were problems out there," he said of the growing discontent within the WAC membership. "I knew there were discussions taking place as far as what options might be, but I was surprised and shocked to get the announcement today."

Shocked? Only by the speed at which the developments leading up to Tuesday's decision took place. Air Force athletic director Col. Randall Spetman wasn't leaking fuel from his overheated jet engine when he expressed his displeasure over the realignment issue and threatened to take the Falcons to a new nest.

Surely Benson couldn't have cavalierly dismissed Cavagnaro's anti-WAC statements the past couple of years. The UNLV athletic director made no bones about his displeasure regarding the way things were being run.

But whether or not he felt like he got Pearl Harbored Tuesday, Benson knows that, ultimately, the bomb that leveled the WAC was loaded with green. It was delivered as a political statement by those who had the clout and used it.

Money. It was always about the money.

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