USU football moving up — by attrition

Since the initial flurry of changes last year that nearly resulted in the demise of the Western Athletic Conference, things have calmed down. Sort of. Temporarily.

But don’t plan on anything permanent in the near future.

WAC commissioner Karl Benson said on Tuesday that changes will continue. Among other things he mentioned was that football in the conference will likely be a scaled back model of its former self.
“I think that with the lack of potential football members, we may need to rely on a different model,” he said. “There are some non-football playing schools in the West that fit int our footprint and are being evaluated, and Utah Valley will receive the full consideration for potential membership.”

The WAC will have a projected seven football schools a year from now (San Jose State, Idaho, New Mexico State, Utah State, Texas State, Texas San-Antonio, Louisiana Tech).

KARL BENSON

“That is not an ideal number, but it’s a number that is workable, and the future membership of the WAC is not going to be finalized in the next six months. It’s going to be another 12 months, if not longer, before we’re able to make final decisions,” Benson said.

It’s possible the WAC could absorb some Big Sky teams, though it has already been rejected by Montana. Weber State? Nothing is out of the question, though attendance in both of the major revenue sports isn’t good. However, Weber does have a football program — something the WAC sorely needs. Of course, so other Big Sky schools like Northern Arizona, Sacramento State, Eastern Washington and Northern Colorado.

Trite as it may seem, the Mountain West will soon be mostly the old WAC, so perhaps the Big Sky will become the WAC.

Benson continued, “There are football-playing schools in the West that have expressed interest in moving from FCS to FBS, and yet at this time, none are prepared to make that move. That doesn’t mean a year from now there won’t be schools in the West that are going to make the move. Historically, when you look at the movement that has occurred in the last 20 years…look at Idaho and Nevada and Boise State — all those schools came out of the Big Sky. So history shows that Big Sky members have moved up, so to speak, to the WAC, and the WAC has certainly been a viable and a very productive landing spot. I suspect that will be the case in the future. It just doesn’t appear that it’s going to happen now.”

One thing seems certain: Utah State’s football prospects are looking up — at least in the sense that the best competition is moving on. With Boise State, Nevada, Hawaii and Fresno State moving to the Mountain West, that gives USU a chance to dominate against smaller programs.