WAC presidents kept big secret

Steve Carp

Thursday, May 28, 1998 | 10:47 a.m.

Al Yates never hosted a TV game show. But if they ever bring back "I've Got A Secret," the Colorado State president could be a '90s version of Bill Cullen and not miss a beat.

Yates, who was one of the architects of Tuesday's mass exodus by eight institutions, including UNLV, from the Western Athletic Conference, said the clandestine operation crafted over the last three weeks had to be done under cloak-and-dagger conditions.

UNLV, CSU, Wyoming, Air Force, San Diego State, Brigham Young, New Mexico and Utah announced they would be forming their own league as of June 30, 1999.

The yet-to-be-named league has no commissioner, no logo, no television contracts, no headquarters and no NCAA certification. Those matters are expected to be handled in the next few months.

But why go underground with the plan? Why keep things so secretive?

"We couldn't do it any other way," Yates said Wednesday in the aftermath of the bombshell decision that was front page news in virtually every newspaper connected to one of the WAC's 16 schools. "We had to avoid contentiousness. We had to avoid public debate.

"We didn't think it was fair to ask our colleagues in the WAC to accept this decision which they may or may not have been part of."

Yates, who was unhappy with the 13-3 vote on May 3 by the WAC Council to split the 16-team league into two eight-team permanent divisions which had his school and Wyoming separated from traditional rival Air Force, helped set the ground rules for the final push.

Initially, Yates was going to lobby his presidential colleagues to reject the proposal submitted by the WAC Council at next Monday's meeting of the league's CEOs at Monterey, Calif. But then the notion of secession came up, supposedly from Brigham Young and Utah. Yates threw his support behind that plan.

There had been speculation for months that such a scenario might occur. Various schools had been unhappy over various WAC issues. But the actual decision to leave the conference only picked up steam in the last three weeks.

A meeting was arranged last Friday at the Denver International Airport. The presidents of five schools -- CSU, Air Force, Wyoming, BYU and Utah -- were invited.

Yates insisted before another step was taken that mum be the word. No one was to be told. Not the coaches. Not the athletic directors. Not the administrators. Certainly, no one at the WAC -- especially commissioner Karl Benson -- could be informed.

A vow of silence was taken. It was as if the presidents had gone back in time and they were living in 1944, planning the invasion of Normandy. The motto "Loose Lips Sink Ships" was back en vogue. The thinking was, the fewer that knew, the less likely word could get out.

"One of the things I did before I talked was to ensure the others declared absolute confidentiality," Yates said. "For something as important as this, until you have something that everybody could talk about, there had to be complete silence.

"We certainly couldn't conduct this in the media."

It wasn't until all plans were final and UNLV, San Diego State and New Mexico were extended an invitation and were in the fold, that the go-ahead was given to make the news public.

"We wanted to come to a point where we could have a group of eight people who completely agreed on everything," Yates said.

That point came Tuesday afternoon.

Press releases were distributed. Press conferences were held. In a matter of seconds, the nation's biggest conference had been severed in half and was rocked to its very foundation.

It was Yates who broke the news to Benson prior to releasing it to the media. Benson had no idea that the bomb which had just splintered his conference was coming.

"The timing was more surprising than what actually occurred," Benson said.

UNLV athletic director Charlie Cavagnaro said the timing was right, because everything was done and there no longer was a need to hold back the news.

"Once the institutions agree, it's the right time to do it," he said. "Everything happened to fall in place today (Tuesday), so this was the day to do it."

Cavagnaro said UNLV President Dr. Carol Harter had been kept posted regarding the situation. But it wasn't until last weekend that UNLV was locked into the mix.

"Actually, this appeared to be a major option six months ago," Cavagnaro said. "But my sense of it was it wasn't until after the (WAC Council) vote earlier this month that it picked up steam."

What will be interesting is to see what happens when the presidents meet Monday in California. The conversation figures to be heated, to say the least. Yates was hopeful that civility will prevail in Monterey.

"We're talking about a group of presidents who are absolute professionals who want what's best for their institutions," he said.

But he can also understand their anger over Tuesday's events. However, from his perspective, he and his seven colleagues who opted to defect had few options but to proceed the way they did.

"We regret the feelings some may have had," Yates said. "But there really was no other way to do it."