Las Vegas Bowl hopes to keep WAC team in 1999

Steve Guiremand

Monday, Dec. 7, 1998 | 2:21 a.m.

It was about an hour after the third and final WAC Championship football game and Commissioner Karl Benson still was relaxing in his private box at Sam Boyd Stadium with a handful of colleagues.

"We're commiserating a little," Benson said after the completion of what he termed "an awkward weekend."

Awkward because the two teams who played in Saturday's game, longtime WAC powers BYU and Air Force, will be competing in the new eight-team Mountain West Conference next football season. Their surprise secession, along with those of Utah, Wyoming, Colorado State, New Mexico, UNLV and San Diego State, has left the WAC a shell of itself with a future that might best be described as shaky.

Only one team of the remaining eight -- TCU (6-5) -- had a winning record this season. With four teams in Texas (TCU, SMU, Rice and UTEP), one in Oklahoma (Tulsa), two in California (Fresno State and San Jose State) to go along with Hawaii, the WAC finids itself facing a geographical and financial nightmare.

Still, Benson was optimistic after presenting Air Force coach Fisher DeBerry with the last WAC Championship Game football trophy following the Falcons' 20-13 come-from-behind victory.

"We certainly have our challenges," he said. "But I'm still optimistic and enthusiastic about the WAC of the future. It's not the last WAC championship. There still will be more WAC championships in the future.

"This kind of marks the end of a particular era. But the WAC has gone through many different membership changes. In 1978, when Arizona and Arizona State left (for the Pac-10 Conference), everyone thought the WAC couldn't survive after that, but we have."

But Benson acknowledged there will no longer be any WAC Championship football games at Sam Boyd Stadium.

"This game was a very good ending to the WAC-Las Vegas partnership," Benson said. "There was a full stadium, an exciting game. I've said all along that I think the WAC has certainly upheld its part of the deal."

Now Benson is hopeful that the Las Vegas Bowl, which still has a year left on its arrangement with the WAC, will uphold the final year of its deal.

Benson said he met Friday with Rossi Ralenkotter, vice president of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority and a key member of the Las Vegas Bowl selection committee, about working out a deal to have a WAC team in the 1999 Las Vegas Bowl.

"We still have one year left on our agreement," Benson said. "It's subject to good-faith renegotiation. We hope to announce next week that the WAC will indeed play in the 1999 Las Vegas Bowl."

Ralenkotter said any such announcement wouldn't be likely until January.

"Basically, we're negotiating to try and come up with a resolution to our contract," he said.

"I met with Karl on Friday and we put together some points for a proposal. We still need to discuss it with our staff and the board of directors. The earliest anything could be finalized is in January."

Ralenkotter said the Las Vegas Bowl also is having discussions with the new Mountain West Conference.

"A couple of other conferences have expressed an interest," he said. "Anything with the WAC at this point would be a one-year deal. But we are moving forward."

"We certainly wouldn't oppose a Mountain West vs. WAC matchup," Benson said. "I would hope that it could be a long-term arrangement. But we have at least one shot of playing here in Las Vegas."

Benson praised both DeBerry and BYU head coach LaVell Edwards for making the best of what could have been an ugly situation last week. Both went out of their way to praise their schools' long-time arrangements with the WAC and thanked Benson for his leadership. And there was no gloating over the fact that two future Mountain West teams were in the final WAC Championship Game.

"They're two guys who I have the utmost respect for," Benson said. "As uncomfortable as it could have been, it made it much easier to accept because of the way they handled themselves."

"We at the Air Force Academy appreciate the Western Athletic Conference and what it has done for our program," DeBerry said. "The Western Athletic Conference has given our program a lot of opportunities, it's given our program a lot of credibility.

"I love Karl Benson. I think he's one of the premier commissioners in the entire country. I mean that. It's sad to see (the split) happen because I know his heart is torn in two directions. We're honored to be going into a new conference, but it's with some degree of trepidation, some degree of sadness."

Game notes

The victory gave the Falcons (11-1) their first outright WAC football title. "I think it will give our team some momentum heading into the new (Mountain West) conference," Air Force coach Fisher DeBerry said. "It's going to be a tremendous conference. Every game, with the teams in the conference, could be just like this type of game every Saturday afternoon." ... It looked like BYU would win its 20th WAC title. The Cougars held a 13-6 lead with less than four minutes to go when Falcons quarterback Blane Morgan hit wide receiver Matt Farmer on a quick screen in the flat. Farmer sidestepped Cougar strong safety Chris Ellison and raced 59 yards for what proved to be the game-winning touchdown with 3:49 left. Fullback Spanky Gilliam added a 29-yard touchdown run with 1:43 left to make it 20-13. BYU then drove to its own 44 before eventually turning the ball over on downs and Air Force ran out the clock. ... BYU dominated the game statistically, holding huge edges in total yards (390 to 260), first downs (29 to 11) and time of possesion (36:02 to 23:58). But the Cougars managed just two field goals and a 13-yard Kevin Feterik to Mike Rigell touchdown pass in seven trips inside the red zone. "I thought we pretty much dominated the game, but our inability to score pretty much killed us," Edwards said. Added DeBerry: "My thought was that if they had won the game, they had beaten us at our own game. They had the ball pretty much the whole dag-gummed third quarter." ... The crowd, which appeared to be a sellout, was announced at 32,745.