Columnist Ron Kantowski: Who needs the Froghorns? Certainly not the MWC

Friday, Jan. 30, 2004 | 10:09 a.m.

Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

OK, maybe if the NCAA granted Slingin' Sammy Baugh a fifth year of eligibility -- and he wasn't 89 years old -- it would make sense for the Mountain West to add Texas Christian as its ninth member.

Otherwise, I just don't get it.

For starters, if TCU is such a good fit, why didn't the Mountain West presidents invite it along back in 1998 during that meeting at the airport in Denver when they decided to secede from the Western Athletic Conference in Bob Irsay fashion -- you know, load up the moving vans in the middle of the night without telling anybody -- to form a league of their own?

If you recall, the Horned Frogs -- and just about everybody else -- were part of the 16-team WAC that became more unwieldy than Billy Tubbs' comb-over hairdo on a windy day. I don't recall any of the Mountain West presidents shedding crocodile tears -- or in this case, Horned Frog tears -- when it was suggested they leave TCU and the others behind.

Apparently, they didn't have the foresight to gauge that TCU would start winning more football games than it lost. But other than that, what has changed to make TCU the best thing since Texas toast?

All those TV sets in the Dallas-Fort Worth area that supposedly make TCU so desirable from a marketing and media standpoint are still there. But as I've said before, if they're all tuned to Texas vs. Oklahoma, how does that help the Mountain West?

Other than a competitive football team -- and who's to say how long that will last? -- what else does TCU bring to the Mountain West table? (Or for that matter, vice versa?) Tubbs is no longer berating officials and even when he was, the TCU basketball program wasn't all that interesting, at least not to its own fans.

I recall sitting behind the TCU bench when it played Utah for the WAC championship at the Thomas & Mack Center in 1997. While the Utes brought along about 7,000 fans from Salt Lake City, you could almost count the Tubbs Thumpers on one hand.

Sure, it was a lot easier commute for the Utah fans. Which is my point, exactly. Getting to and from Fort Worth, especially for UNLV and San Diego State, which are two time zones away, could prove to be a logistical nightmare, especially in basketball.

In that TCU will be the ninth MWC member, it would not have a travel partner. Most of the conference teams will have to crisscross half the country to play one game. And what about Big Monday? We complain about the 9 p.m. starts here, but do you know what time those games will tip at Daniel Meyer Coliseum?

Of course, the basketball coaches weren't consulted on the issue of TCU, which is totally driven by football. The inclusion of the Horned Frogs will result in a balanced Mountain West schedule -- four home and four away. But then it also limits your scheduling options.

Let's say you're Wyoming, and you need to play somebody like Tennessee to pay some bills. Maybe the Volunteers have the last Saturday in September open. Oops, can't do it. That's the day the Cowboys play TCU.

Obviously, the whole idea behind expansion is increasing revenue. But I don't see that adding TCU makes the MWC significantly more viable in the eyes of the Bowl Championship Cartel -- er, Series. Maybe if you dropped the 'C' and put the 'U' in front of the 'T' you could understand it. Then again, ask somebody from the Big 12 how many championships Texas has won since it joined the league.

As stated earlier, the Froghorns play pretty good football. They're like Utah or Colorado State, only with purple uniforms. But why add a Ford to the Chevys already parked in the garage? What the Mountain West really needs is a Ferrari, but they've all driven off to the ACC.

So the Mountain West presidents would have been smart to go in another direction. A better strategy would have been inviting Gary Crowton to dinner and demanding that he get his act together at BYU.