the Pac 10 Conference
Jim Maldoon, Pac 10 publicity director
Every season, teams in the Western Athletic Conference get snubbed. Every year, WAC schools complain about being overlooked for the NCAA tournament or a major bowl game.
With the lack of respect the WAC gets in collegiate sports, will San Diego State ever look for a conference that will allow it to grow into a nationally respected institution?
Perhaps.
And perhaps that conference will be the Pac 10.
With a picturesque campus, great weather, prime location and state-of-the-art sports facilities, SDSU is a university on the rise. But are there any realistic possibilities for a WAC school to play in the Pac 10?
According to Jim Maldoon, Pac 10 publicity director, every university in the PAC 10 would have to unanimously ratify such a move.
“Expansion around the Pac 10 is currently a back-burner issue,” Maldoon said. “That is not to say that the Pac 10 won’t expand, but it is not currently being discussed or studied.”
With its two new state-of-the-art facilities, Tony Gwynn Stadium and the Aztec Bowl Arena, SDSU now has two on-campus Pac 10 caliber stadiums.
In addition, SDSU plays at Qualcomm Stadium, one of the finest football fields in the country.
“I think that the most important thing that I am doing right now is to let people know that San Diego State is really developing some first-class facilities,” SDSU Athletics Director Rick Bay said. “And whatever your image is about San Diego State, forget it until you come up here and see for yourself how much the campus is changing.”
An expansion proposal
While the Pac 10 says expansion is on hold, some experts believe that the Pac 10 could greatly benefit by realigning and allowing two new universities into their conference.
If SDSU and Brigham Young were allowed to join, the Pac 10 would become the Pac12. The new alignment would allow the Pac12 to be divided into two divisions, the Pac North and the Pac South.
The northern division would consist of California, Stanford, Oregon, Oregon State, Washington and Washington State.
The southern division would consist of Arizona, Arizona State, UCLA, USC, BYU and San Diego State.
“If we decided to expand,” Maldoon said, “(BYU and SDSU) would be among the natural institutions to look at.”
Will the Pac 12 ever happen?
It almost did.
A few years ago, the Pac 10 invited the University of Colorado and the University of Texas to join its conference, but the proposed plan fell through. If the Pac 10 was willing to expand in the past, why not in the future?
Bay has a possible answer.
“Many people in the Pac 10 have never been on our campus,” Bay said. “The important thing for us at San Diego State is just to try to get people on our campus to see how much the campus has changed.”
Change. Many believe the Pac 10 needs it in order to compete with other major conferences. With the Southeast Conference, Big 12 and WAC already having a championship game in place for football and basketball, and many other conferences moving toward this trend, the Pac 10 can not afford to fall behind economically.
The new alignment would enable the Pac12 to have a Pac North vs. Pac South championship game, allowing the conference to share millions of dollars in revenue produced by games of that caliber.
WAC heartbreak
Even after SDSU’s football team recorded its second consecutive eight-win season last year, it still failed to get a bowl berth.
However, 10 other schools with worse records than the Aztecs’ 8-3 mark played in bowl games. By not being invited to a bowl game, the SDSU football program lost an estimated $700,000 in revenue.
The Aztecs were not the only WAC school to get passed up for a bowl last season. The University of Wyoming (10-2, ranked 22nd at season’s end) was also overlooked.
But perhaps the biggest injustice the WAC suffered last season was when 5th- ranked BYU was passed up by the alliance. This caused the school and the WAC to lose their share of the $8.5 million payday that the Fiesta Bowl offered.
“I can’t compare BYU’s situation with ours,” Tollner told The Daily Aztec Dec. 8, 1996. “I’m really disappointed in the decison in the Bowl Alliance. I really thought the at large was for the highest-ranked at-large team, which was BYU. I think BYU really got a bad deal.”
Added WAC Commissioner Karl Benson: “I’m as disappointed for San Diego State and Wyoming as I am for BYU.”
After last season’s disappointment, BYU backers have now pursued the possibility of joining the Pac 10.
“There has been a lot of speculation among different members of the media and fans,” BYU head coach Lavelle Edwards said. “Obviously, if (Pac 10 expansion) happened, it would be something to definitely look at.”
One thing major conferences like the Big Ten have been looking at are WAC coaches. Recently, Aztecs women’s basketball head coach Beth Burns departed to become Ohio State’s head coach, and the University of Wyoming’s head football coach Joe Tiller left the WAC for Purdue.
Burns’ departure came mysteriously enough after a season in which her basketball team won the WAC tournament but recieved an abysmal No. 11 seed in the NCAA tournament, exactly six seeds lower than the University of Utah, which the Aztecs defeated in the championship game.
No one seemed to understand the seeding, not even San Diego Union- Tribune columnist Nick Canepa.
“What they did to San Diego State’s women’s team is borderline criminal,” Canepa wrote. “Not to mention that it makes no sense.”
These are only some of the reasons why many fans and alumni of SDSU believe the school should attempt to compete in the PAC 10. But can anything be done to start such a movement? Will the day ever come that SDSU competes in the Pac 10?
“Whatever is done has to be done quietly and behind the scenes,” Bay said. “I talk to people all the time as I move around to various conferences. All we can do is monitor what happens around the country as conferences change and realign and have our best case ready to present if and when the opportunity comes.”
