North Texas Response

[50's PONY]

Matthew Postins: Time for UNT to move on, get WACky
09:23 AM CDT on Sunday, May 2, 2004




Matthew Postins Right about now, Mean Green nation is still feeling the sting of rejection after Conference USA invited Texas-El Paso to join its league, and the Miners accepted.

It sucks, doesn’t it? It’s just like that really hot girl in high school that laughed at you when you asked her to the prom. Not that that happened to me, mind you, but I’ve heard it’s like that.

With Friday’s announcement went UNT’s best option in changing conferences — and C-USA Commissioner Britton Banowsky’s credibility. Didn’t Banowsky make it clear several months ago that he wanted a Central Time Zone conference? And isn’t UTEP in the Mountain Time Zone, or did El Paso move east between November and now?

C-USA took UTEP because of its basketball tradition, and I guess I can’t blame them after losing Louisville, Cincinnati and Marquette to the Big East. UTEP is a good band-aid in that regard. But I still think UNT was C-USA’s best long-term solution for expansion.

UNT officials need to get over this fast, because the fluidity of conference realignment has presented another option. Western Athletic Conference commissioner Karl Benson told the Denton Record-Chronicle on Friday that UNT is on his conference’s shopping list for expansion.

Truth is the Mean Green have been on the short list for some time. Benson was biding his time until C-USA made its decision.

Now the WAC can come calling. What will UNT do? Well, UNT President Dr. Norval Pohl expressed some serious reservations about moving to the WAC. And what about UNT Athletic Director Rick Villarreal, who is supposed to be the face of that department? Well, he didn’t return phone calls to the Record-Chronicle’s Brett Vito on Friday, so who knows what he’s thinking right now.

What am I thinking? It’s time for UNT to get WACky and take its chances in a new conference.

The Sun Belt Conference’s viability as a conference is slowly diminishing. Just take a look at its newest football members — Florida Atlantic and Florida International, both Division I-AA. While all other conferences cherry pick from other Division I-A conferences, the Sun Belt must survive off schools trying to prove themselves at the next level. Eventually, that tap will run dry.

What if the WAC raids the Sun Belt and strips it clean like a Pennsylvania coal mine, after UNT decides to take its chances in the SBC? It takes eight schools to have a Division I-A football conference, and if the WAC takes the two-division route, which is an option, it will need four more schools. The Sun Belt is the conference the WAC will have to turn to for survival.

Where will the Sun Belt turn to survive? The Southland? None of those schools are anywhere near ready to make the leap to the next level. In this worst-case scenario, UNT becomes an independent, and unless it’s Notre Dame or a service academy, a school can’t survive as an independent these days.

UNT must think of itself in this situation and not the Sun Belt. Sure, the conference has been good to them the past few years, especially in football. But in the interest of self-preservation UNT must say "yes" as quickly to the WAC as UTEP did to C-USA.

I understand some of Dr. Pohl’s concerns, and they’re legitimate. The travel isn’t the best, with the WAC stretching all the way to Hawaii. In the current alignment, UNT would be one of only two schools in the Central Time Zone (Louisiana Tech is the other). So that budget would certainly go up.

But there are many other reasons to move to the WAC. First, there’s surely more money to be had in revenue sharing, TV money and bowl money in the WAC than the Sun Belt. I don’t know what the bump would be, but the Sun Belt currently awards $100,000 in revenue sharing to each of its schools.

The Sun Belt has one bowl tie-in; The WAC has four, though that could change after this wave of realignment is finally complete. But I don’t see the WAC losing more than one bowl tie-in, especially since three of its current bowls — Hawaii, Humanitarian (Boise, Idaho) and Silicon Valley (San Jose) — are in WAC cities.

There’s also a bump in prestige— albeit marginal — with a move to the WAC. A WAC championship carries more weight on the national scene than a Sun Belt championship.

Finally, moving to the WAC might put UNT in a better position to leap to a better conference down the road. Dominating the Sun Belt in football is one thing. Doing it in the WAC is entirely another. A few years of competing well in the WAC could set UNT up for another shot at C-USA membership.

The weight is on Dr. Pohl’s and Villarreal’s shoulders now, because I firmly believe a WAC invitation is close at hand. Their decision when that invitation comes will say a lot about the direction they hope to take UNT’s athletic department in the coming years.

And if I’m a UNT fan, that decision better mean Hawaii’s on the 2005 football schedule.

MATTHEW POSTINS can be reached at 940-566-6874.


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Online at: http://www.dentonrc.com/sharedcontent/d ... b4161.html

[JayM]

That's Postins response, not UNT's. Chances of a UNT move to the WAC without a supporting cast to comprise a 6 team eastern division are slim & none. Chances of Louisiana Tech joining the Sun Belt are much higher than an UNT move.