Columnist Steve Carp: Big West breakup was inevitable

Steve Carp

Thursday, July 29, 1999 | 10:12 a.m.

Steve Carp is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at carp@lasvegassun.com or 259-4087.

You could see it coming. Especially given the way collegiate athletics are headed. The dominoes were going to eventually fall.

The era of the superconference is close at hand and the Big West Conference knew it was never going to be a player. It never had a shot of being a strong football league and as the Bowl Championship Series closed ranks, Dennis Farrell's league was on the outside looking in.

Wisely, the Big West came to this realization and decided to cut its losses. So the re-structured Big West will be about basketball, not football, putting itself on a plane with the likes of the Patriot League.

What took them so long?

Obviously, Nevada-Reno's decision to bolt to the WAC escalated talk of a breakup. But the reality is the Big West was in trouble long before that. When Fresno State opted to leave for the WAC in 1992, the conference lost one of its strongest members from an across-the-board standpoint.

And when UNLV followed suit three years later, the Big West lost its marquee program for basketball. Of course, by the time the Rebels had bailed on the Big West, much of the luster had come off its basketball star.

But what if Fresno State had remained? What if UNLV were still in the Big West? It's doubtful the league would have broken ranks from within. Perhaps there would have even been incentive for Cal State Fullerton, Pacific and Long Beach State to maintain football. It probably wouldn't have catapulted the league into the then-bowl alliance. But you never know. Things were a little different back in 1991. Perhaps the resources could have been found at those institutions to make football priority one.

Instead, the Big West will become a tidy hoops-driven league, much like the West Coast Conference. Maybe Sacramento State and Cal State Northridge bolt from the Big Sky and join up with UC Irvine, Cal Poly, UC Santa Barbara, Long Beach, UOP and Fullerton and give Farrell an eight-team Golden State circuit.

As for Utah State, North Texas, New Mexico State, Idaho and Boise State, those schools are going to be scrambling.

Maybe one or two get to join Conference USA. Maybe the WAC takes one. Perhaps the Sun Belt opts to invite some of the schools. But it's not the path of choice for those institutions and it's a clear indication of where this is headed.

The rich will get richer. And it makes you wonder what that means for the Mountain West Conference. Because it is not in the Bowl Championship Series mix. At least from an automatic perspective. The WAC couldn't deliver on that concept and neither will the MWC.

So when the real re-organization of Division I conferences takes place in the next couple of years, will the Mountain West be able to wedge its way into the party and be one of the superleagues? Or will it wind up being an upscale version of the Big West, with football programs dressed up with nowhere to go and basketball the sole dependent for life-sustaining revenue?

It'll be Craig Thompson's biggest challenge as commissioner. As for Farrell, he fought the good fight for over a decade. Unfortunately, he lost and it is a sad day because the Big West was always a fun league with a lot of good people. But the truth is, Farrell had no choice but to consolidate. It's a decision he probably should have made a few years earlier.

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