Posted on: Sunday, August 10, 2003

Conference would have brighter future if schools stick together

Ferd Lewis
Advertiser columnist

When the question of the changing conference landscape comes up around the Western Athletic Conference, school officials invariably parrot the line of, "We intend to do all we can to make the conference strong and viable ... "

Now, they might just have the opportunity to prove it.

Commissioner Karl Benson has begun visiting conference members and filling them in on a plan that would raise the exit price as a means of both assuring immediate security and enhancing the future.

The idea is that if the bylaws were changed so that it cost $2 million to $5 million to leave the conference — instead of the $500,000 to $700,000 penalty now on the books — schools would think long and hard about bolting for another non-Bowl Championship Series conference.

If the 10 schools that make up the WAC could, for once, be assured that none of their number will be sneaking out the window at midnight, then they could not only safely ride out the expected wave of expansion but be in a position to prosper from it.

If you are Hawai'i, then, the questions become: Are we sure we're going to be offered a significantly better future somewhere else? And, will it be at a price we can afford?

For as soon as the Big East reacts next year to the raid by the Atlantic Coast Conference that carried off Miami and Virginia Tech, conferences and schools will be scurrying to form new attachments.

In that, the WAC faces not only the threat of poaching by the Mountain West but the opportunity to expand and improve itself by adding teams from conferences plundered by the Big East.

For the WAC, the addition, say, of Texas Christian and either Houston or Tulane, would make for a stronger, balanced 12-team, two-division conference lessening travel and improving profile and marketability.

But for that, there first need to be assurances that everybody stays together long enough to make it happen, no easy task in a conference where, since the breakup of 1998, half the schools have been eyeing moves and the other half have been looking over their shoulders.

The so-called "Benson Plan" addresses that by jacking up the exit fee for anybody contemplating defection to a non-BCS conference. If enough schools agree to a change in the bylaws — and eight of 10 would need to sign on making it a longshot — suddenly what might be a lateral move is cost-prohibitive.

Yet, if somewhere out of the blue a BCS conference, such as the Pac-10 should call, reportedly there is a provision for a much less steep payment. Likewise, if the WAC isn't able to add significant value in new members, all bets could be off.

United, the WAC membership has an opportunity to take its future in its hands for the first time and not only survive but prosper.

Divided, the WAC becomes shark bait.