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Sunday, July 20, 2008

League Was Created by Flustered WAC Schools

By Greg Archuleta
Journal Staff Writer
       In the beginning, 16 were too many, but eight was enough.
    Eight rogue schools from the 16-member Western Athletic Conference agreed to defect from the bloated league 10 years ago in May to form the fledgling Mountain West Conference.
    Air Force Academy athletics director Dr. Hans Mueh, chair of the chemistry department at the academy in 1998, also served as the school's faculty athletics representative when he and then-AD Randy Spetman — now AD at Florida State — were in Tucson for WAC spring meetings in early May 1998.
    "We were sitting around the joint council, and an issue came up about separating the 16-school WAC into two sectors of eight and eight that would play against each other with very little crossover," says Mueh, entering his fifth year as the Falcons AD. "The group had separated us from our traditional partners. We had played the University of Wyoming for 40 years, and we had played Colorado State for 40 years, and all of a sudden our traditional rivals were going to the other side and we were not matched up."
    Mueh says the representatives from Wyoming, Colorado State and Air Force each left the meeting and immediately called their respective school presidents.
    "President (Al) Yates at Colorado State quickly took up the mantle and became the leader in this effort," Mueh says. "Within a day, he called Brigham Young and Utah to explain the situation and ask them if it was time for this unwieldy, 16-team WAC to split into two separate conferences."
    The presidents of the five schools then extended invitations to the University of New Mexico, UNLV and San Diego State, and on May 26, 1998, a new conference was born.
    The bloated WAC only lasted three years, through the 1998-99 school year. Besides splitting revenues 16 ways and interrupting natural rivalries, the WAC had another big problem.
    "We had conference meetings where there were 48 people sitting around the table," Mueh says. "And everybody had a voice and a vote. It was impossible to get a consensus on anything. It got pretty contentious over the last few months."
    NCAA bylaws mandated that schools leaving a conference to form a new conference had to give a year's notice. That gave the new league time to come up with a name, find a commissioner, locate a headquarters and organize schedules for all its sports.
    Craig Thompson was commissioner of the Sun Belt Conference when the yet-to-be-named conference asked him to take over its reins, which he did officially on Oct. 15, 1998. His résumé was ideal for the league.
    "There's a real irony because it's the second time I was commissioner of a start-up league," Thompson says. "In 1987, I started a league called the American South, which had Louisiana Tech, Southwest Louisiana, Lamar, Pan-American and Arkansas State. Same deal: me, no staff, no office, no headquarters city, nothing."
    Within two weeks the conference hammered out a seven-year, $48 million television deal for football and basketball with ESPN.
    "I think that was a very important first step," Thompson says. "We were still nine months away from playing our first game, and we had a seven-year TV deal with ESPN. Definitely, it was instant credibility."
    Two months later, the MWC signed a three-year agreement to send its football champion to the Liberty Bowl. In 2000-01, the NCAA granted the MWC automatic postseason eligibility in all sports, and the conference was off and running.