Is 12 the magic number for WAC?
By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Columnist
When your conference already stretches longer than the Great Wall of China, what are a couple more outposts among friends?
When your conference currently takes in seven states, who is gonna quibble over the addition of another one?
Apparently, not the Western Athletic Conference.
While college athletics waits to see what the fallout from the Atlantic Coast Conference's courtship of the University of Miami will be, the WAC is poised to put out the welcome mat again.
A WAC that plants its flag deeper in Texas or Louisiana? Or, one that might even meander into Mississippi? They are food for thought and signs increasingly suggest the WAC is doing more than just scratching its head.
Under one scenario, if Syracuse and either Boston College or Virginia Tech follow the Hurricanes out the door of the Big East Conference and the Big East reaches out to Conference USA for replacements, the WAC could roll out the red carpet for a new membership drive to the East.
For it looks like Conference USA has the potential to feel the biggest after-shock of any Big East breakup. If the Big East decides to remain a football-basketball league, then Louisville, Cincinnati and Memphis — current C-USA members — are the most likely replacements.
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Add two of them — presumably the WAC has learned its lesson about what can happen when you go beyond 12 — and the conference suddenly has two divisions, a football championship game, some geographic balance and a potentially brighter future.
The WAC could have Hawai'i, Fresno State, San Jose State, Boise State, Nevada and Texas-El Paso in the West and place Tulsa, Southern Methodist, Rice, Louisiana Tech plus two fill-in-the-blank choices in the East.
The two-division model is something commissioner Karl Benson has pushed for years but when the available options were the usual suspects, Utah State, New Mexico State, Idaho, etc., nobody was buying.
Now, if you are UH, which already travels 4,035 miles to Ruston, La., for road trips, any move that actually decreases travel by playing inside a division while enhancing membership is something worth exploring. At least until a better offer presents itself.
