Nevada leaving Big West to join WAC

Scott Sonner

Thursday, June 10, 1999 | 9:17 a.m.

RENO, Nev. - The Western Athletic Conference will add Nevada as its ninth member beginning with the 2000-2001 season, but decided against expanding to include Boise State or New Mexico State.

"We have invited the University of Nevada to join the WAC Conference effective July 1 of 2000," said Gerald Turner, the president of Southern Methodist University and the chairman of the WAC board of directors.

"They add to the WAC and meet a few of our needs," he said Wednesday during a teleconference from Napa, Calif., where the league board was meeting.

Nevada president Joe Crowley said it was "a major step forward for our athletic department and our university in general."

"We'll be keeping company with fine, highly accredited institutions," he said.

Boise State and New Mexico State were among others that had bid for membership in the WAC.

Nevada, currently a member of the Big West Conference, will give the WAC an additional West Coast team to go along with current members Fresno State, San Jose State, Hawaii, Rice, Southern Methodist, Texas Christian, Tulsa and Texas-El Paso.

"The schools on the west side of the Rocky Mountains have felt there needed to be at least one other one so there would be four that would balance the four in Texas" plus Tulsa, Turner said.

Additional expansions will be considered in the future under the right circumstances. But "the current membership doesn't feel any pressure at all to expand beyond nine," Turner said.

The move comes after eight schools - Air Force, Brigham Young, Colorado State, New Mexico, San Diego State, UNLV, Utah and Wyoming - left the WAC following the 1998-99 season to form a new conference.

Turner said Wednesday WAC officials still are contemplating a lawsuit against the new Mountain West Conference, but probably won't decide until the summer or fall.

He said they are still "trying to ascertain what the issues are, what the financial cost of the breakup has been and so on."

WAC Commissioner Karl Benson confirmed that both New Mexico State and Boise State were given a close look for inclusion in the WAC.

"When it came down to deciding what was in the best interest of the WAC both immediately and into the future, Nevada provides the most," Benson said.

Nevada's baseball team played in the 1999 NCAA Tournament. Its inclusion in the WAC will help the WAC maintain its automatic berth in that tourney, Benson said. He also noted Nevada's role in hosting past Big West Conference basketball tournaments.

"Reno is a destination. ... It is safe to say their history of hosting conference basketball tournaments will be looked at following 2001," he said.

Reno's proximity to Fresno and San Jose weighed greatly in the decision, Turner said.

Nevada "has an academic program mix that is very attractive and has an athletic program that we believe will add to the overall ability and strength of the conference," he said.

Nevada's football team has developed a reputation for a wide-open passing game and has had one of the nation's most productive offenses over the past five years. The men's basketball team slumped this past year but will be led next season by a new coach, Trent Johnson, a former assistant at Stanford.

Nevada Athletic Director Chris Ault, a former Wolf Pack football coach, said the football squad was especially excited.

"We think with our 60 sky boxes and average attendance of 24,000, that will even go up with the quality of play the WAC offers us," Ault said.

Crowley said he was sympathetic to other Big West Conference schools worried about the impact of Nevada's defection.

"These kinds of changes do not come easily," he said.

"You have to do ... what you think is best for your institution. At this time, the best thing for my institution is to be a member of the Western Athletic Conference."