ISLAND VOICES
UH has outgrown the WAC

Daniel Nunes is a UH-Manoa student and senior staff writer for the school newspaper, Ka Leo O Hawai'i.

The Western Athletic Conference just isn't good enough for Hawai'i anymore. Sure, UH has shot to the top of the conference in nearly every sport, but come on, look at its competition. Winning is fun, and beating the stuffing out of Rice in football and volleyball is wonderful, but are we really accomplishing anything?

Remaining in the WAC is suicide for the athletics program. WAC Commissioner Karl Benson has single-handedly turned a decent conference into one of the worst in Division I-A.

The WAC, which was once well-respected, is now considered an incredibly insulting "mid-major." That status was confirmed when Benson decided to sign us up for the Bracket Busters basketball event, pitting the best of the mid-major conferences' schools against one another in the desperate hope that they'll gain some sort of new-found recognition before March Madness. But instead of helping itself, the WAC once again hurt itself by going 1-3 in the competition.

The UH athletics program is in deficit. Hawai'i's lack of conference rivals directly affects ticket sales and revenue. But once Hawai'i plays a non-conference opponent, ticket sales skyrocket.

The only Hawai'i teams to win national championships in the past 15 years are the men's volleyball team and the women's sailing team. And they aren't even in the WAC.

Why did the 2002 Warriors win the national title? It's simple. They play in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, home of the best teams in the land. Come playoff time, they're battle-tested and ready to perform at a championship level.

The Rainbow Wahine volleyball teams in the '80s won national titles for that same reason. They were members of the tough Big West Conference, along with other volleyball powers like Pacific and Long Beach State. This year's Rainbow Wahine volleyball team may once again fall short, not because it doesn't have the talent, but because while the Wahine are slaughtering San Jose State and Boise State, teams like USC and Stanford of the Pac-10 are getting into high gear by playing one other.

Hawai'i's football team went 9-3 in 2001 and didn't even get a bowl invitation. UH instead had to create its own bowl just to ensure that it wouldn't be passed over again. Does anyone outside of the conference really care who wins the WAC championship?

Both the men and women's basketball teams at UH have also been snubbed by the NCAA over the WAC years. It's preposterous that the 2002 Rainbow Warriors, who went 27-6 and won the WAC regular-season title and WAC Tournament, were given a No. 10 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

Last year's Wahine volleyball team was 30-1 and ranked No. 2 and was still given a No. 6 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

Now there's news that Tulsa, SMU and Rice are leaving to join Conference USA. I, for one, applaud them. They've finally realized what UH has not: The WAC is skydiving without a parachute. With those schools leaving, the WAC has invited New Mexico State and Utah State, teams that have a combined football record of 4-12 this season. Yeah, we're improving our conference, all right.

Not only that, our great commissioner is also considering other teams from the Sun Belt Conference, which is quite possibly worse than the WAC.

How will Hawai'i finally release itself from the imprisonment of the WAC?

Well, that's for the administration to figure out. But the first step would be to admit there's a problem, which is something I believe they are starting to do. One thing's for sure: Hawai'i had better get out quick or it will find itself drifting even farther off the national map.

As if we're not far enough as it is.