MWC Notebook: Thompson defends moving to Fridays

Steve Guiremand

Wednesday, Aug. 1, 2001 | 10:46 a.m.

Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson defended his conference's decision to move two football games to Friday night this fall so that they could be televised nationally by ESPN.

A number of state high school organizations, including Nevada's, were critical of the MWC and UNLV for breaking an unwritten rule of playing opposite the high schools on Friday night. UNLV hosts Big Ten favorite Northwestern on Sept. 7 and defending MWC champ Colorado State the following week at Sam Boyd Stadium. Both games will start at 5 p.m.

"I can stand the backlash," Thompson said. "If I'm UNLV, I certainly would do it again. I don't think it's a detriment to high school football."

Thompson said that Nevada high schools were informed last November of the possibility of UNLV moving some games to Friday night so they could be nationally televised.

"They were well, well aware almost a year in advance so that if they wanted they could move their games to Thursday or Saturday during those two weeks," Thompson said. "So I don't buy into that argument that we dropped a bombshell on them. I have the correspondence and the carbons that they were notified way back last November that those two weekends could potentially have Friday games. That's how far in advance we do our schedules."

Thompson said he was unsure whether the Mountain West would schedule any Friday night games in 2002.

"We don't have anything next year scheduled for Friday yet because I don't know if ESPN will ask us again, and I'm not sure any institution, including UNLV, would be interested in doing it again," Thompson said.

Thompson proposed a solution for this year's head-to-head conflicts.

"Why not just push back the high school games to 8 p.m. those nights?" he said.

"It certainly can work if that is what UNLV chooses to do," Thompson, who had two head football coach/ADs during his days as commissioner of the Sun Belt Conference. "John would be a very positive influence. I don't see that (handling two jobs) would be a problem if that's the way they choose to go."

"John can be good at anything he wants to be good at," Tollner, who was an assistant for Robinson at USC, said. "I personally would love to see it happen. It used to be a trend where a number of head football coaches were also athletic directors. But that trend kind of disappeared recently.

"Fund-raising is part of an athletic director's job. John is good at that and he likes to do it. He's very organized, so I don't think it would hurt his football coaching duties. The big thing is because of his name recognition it would give (UNLV) a chance to go out and get some money. And money is a very key issue in college athletics."

Robinson said at Tuesday's Mountain West media day at the Four Seasons hotel that he still remains interested in replacing retiring Charles Cavagnaro.

"Oh yeah," he said. "Under certain scenarios."

Cavagnaro's replacement may not be named until early next year.

Among those appearing on cards will be Robinson, Colorado State coach Sonny Lubick, Air Force coach Fisher DeBerry as well as AFC rookie of the year and Utah alum Mike Anderson of the Denver Broncos and NFC rookie of the year and New Mexico product Brian Urlacher of the Chicago Bears.

"We're going to limit it to 2,500 sets," Thompson said. "Hopefully it will become something of a collector's item. It's just one more way to get our conference name out there."

Thompson said he expects the cards to be available for purchase on conference team web sites later this year. It is being produced by Denver-based Black Diamond productions.

"Nah, but my father and I ran into their father, Richard Williams, one day before a practice," Thomas recalled. "He tried to tell my dad that I should take up tennis."

Fortunately for Rebel fans, Thomas decided to stick to football.