Columnist Dean Juipe: BYU, Utah blamed for WAC revolt

For years sports fans in Las Vegas pushed for UNLV to join the Western Athletic Conference and that dream was finally realized in 1996.

It was a match that looked perfect on paper and in some respects it still has many idyllic qualities. Nonetheless, when the WAC holds its men's and women's basketball tournaments at the Thomas & Mack Center next week, the league and its association with Las Vegas virtually will be at an end.

UNLV, and seven of its WAC colleagues, officially will bolt from the conference following the current school year. The seceding eight will form the Mountain West Conference.

For someone who was here and pushing for UNLV to join the WAC back when the Rebels were competing in the PCAA (and, later, the Big West Conference), the move seems unfortunate.

WAC commissioner Karl Benson agrees. And while he recognizes the 16-team WAC may have been a bit too unwieldy, he, like many of us, wonders what might have been.

"We gave up on it too soon," he said, although the league presidents' collective impatience really was secondary to a couple of other matters that led to the splintering we're about to see. Benson says the No. 1 reason the league is breaking up is the turnover rate among WAC presidents and athletic directors, with the incoming executives less tolerant toward working out the kinks of keeping 16 schools happy. Reason No. 2: WAC bylaws didn't allow for league members to supplement the financial losses their colleagues suffered by participating in football bowl games.

"I've never said this for the record before," Benson said, "but it was BYU and Utah that led to the downfall of the league. BYU changed its president and its athletic director, and Utah changed its president -- plus (basketball coach) Rick Majerus doesn't like the league."

Beyond the shuffling in those front offices and Majerus' bellowing, BYU was angered by having missed out on the Bowl Alliance and by having lost money by appearing in the Cotton Bowl following the 1996 football season. When Colorado State also lost money representing the league in the Holiday Bowl the following year, the momentum had shifted and 16 schools that set out to be cohesive were looking for ways to severe their ties.

"We had too many critics from within," Benson said during a visit to Las Vegas this week. "Outsiders believed what we'd created was workable, but we were hurt by the turnover level of presidents and athletic directors and the fact we had no mechanisms in place for downsizing or for sharing the losses our teams suffered in those bowl games."

UNLV played a supporting role in the 16-team league's demise in that neither president Carol Harter nor A.D. Charlie Cavagnaro was here when their constituents were drooling at the prospect of joining the WAC. Both arrived in 1995 and had no emotional attachment to the league.

They didn't, and maybe still don't, recognize the attraction of the WAC and how badly Las Vegans wanted to be in this league after tolerating the mediocrity of the PCAA.

In hindsight, Benson and everyone else can see how the WAC could have stabilized and survived intact or at least as a 12-school entity. But the reality is that a league the average Las Vegan figured to enjoy for many years is almost in our rear-view mirror.

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