Boise St.

[Guest]

Forgive me for not knowing, but isn't Boise St in the WAC now? If so, why are we not playing them?

[PK]

I assume it has to do with the fact that there are now ten WAC teams and our schedules for out of conference games, which are made several years in advance, were based on a nine team WAC. Therefore we only had slots for eight conference games. That's just a guess on my part. If you remember, we asked Houston to defer so that we could keep TCU on our schedule. I'm curious as to whether or not we will have to start playing nine conference games in the future thus limiting our OC games to just two. Anyone know the answer to that? Personally I think we ought to split into two five team divisions and have a championship game. That would allow us to have at least three and maybe four OC games every year with some rotation in of the other division teams each year to fill in the schedule.

[This message has been edited by PK (edited 10-03-2001).]

[Charleston Pony]

The ideal conference scenario would have been to expand to 12 teams in 2 six team divisions, playing 8 conference games and setting up an east vs west championship game (just like the SEC, Big XII and MAC). At last year's WAC Presidents' meeting, that group decided against expansion, so each WAC member plays all but one of the schools from the "other division" in football. My understanding was that we will stick with an 8 game conference slate. We will play 18 basketball games, with home/home against every other WAC school.

I personally favor expansion, and would like to see NMSU join the WAC east (would be a good rival for UTEP) and Utah St join the west (strongest available program). The problem is that UTEP doesn't want NMSU (probably the same reason we haven't historically wanted to be conference mates with UNT). Aside from setting up a football championship game, having more regional opponents would help reduce travel costs...something that is hurting every WAC school under our current configuration.

[PK]

You're right CP, a twelve team - two division setup would be the ideal, but like you say....who are you going to bring in? Maybe Arizona could join up after it leaves the PAC-10 or maybe we will get lucky and be asked to join the Big12 (like I'll ever live that long).