Posted on: Saturday, May 1, 2004
UH losing its focus in WAC
| • | UTEP to leave WAC in '05 |
| • | UH Football: UH football team indifferent to UTEP's conference switch |
By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist
The University of Hawai'i-Manoa will shortly become the senior member of the Western Athletic Conference.
Hold the high-fives and put the parade on hold, though, because this is definitely no cause for celebration.
It just means that, like somebody who sits on the bench at the bus stop long enough, the Warriors/Rainbow Wahine/Rainbow Warriors/Rainbows have seen a lot of traffic go by.
Why they have been bystanders and not more proactive in determining their own fate is the question that needs to be asked.
So, too, is the matter of what the administration is going to do about it, if it isn't already too late.
By the time UTEP, which had joined the WAC 12 years before UH, officially moves on to Conference USA July 1, 2005, it will be the 13th school to have left the WAC in six years, the past five of which (UTEP, Rice, Southern Methodist, Texas Christian and Tulsa) have gone to
C-USA. TCU subsequently took an additional leap to the Mountain West.
Suddenly, the WAC UH will compete in for 2005-06 will have no resemblance to the one the school was in a handful of years ago, much less the one it joined in 1979.
The Big West, maybe, the Big Sky, perhaps, but not the WAC.
Air Force, Brigham Young, Colorado State, New Mexico, San Diego State, Utah and Wyoming flew the coop in 1999 and now UTEP, a member since 1967, has announced it will bolt.
What UH has been left with for partners will soon include Utah State, New Mexico State and, quite possibly Idaho or North Texas. Can Montana Poly and Tumbleweed Tech be far behind?
Somewhere John A. Burns, the late governor who had the vision and decades-long perseverance to help get UH to the WAC's door, must be rolling over in his grave. Not that anyone could blame him.
Three years ago when UH President Evan Dobelle asked UH coaches where they wanted the school's athletic program to be it is doubtful anybody said they wanted it to be in these straits.
If Dobelle thought, "it doesn't make any sense for us to be in the WAC, in my opinion" a year ago, then how much sense does it make for UH to be in what the WAC will become by 2005?
While everybody was busy daydreaming about the Pac-10 and waiting for a Mountain West Conference call that never came, it seems the neighbors have left.
Somewhere somebody — or maybe several somebodies — have dropped the ball on UH's behalf. For its history in the WAC and what it has been able to bring to the conference, you'd think UH should be playing a major role in shaping the WAC for the better. Not being resigned to taking whatever it is left with.
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.
