UNLV brass reacts to conference expansion … yet again

By Ryan Greene

Thursday, Aug. 19, 2010 | 2:05 a.m.

While taking his daughter down to Southern Cal on Tuesday for her freshman year of college, Western Athletic Conference commissioner Karl Benson made a stop in Las Vegas for breakfast with an old friend — UNLV athletic director Jim Livengood.

Livengood said he and his pal talked about pending conference expansion and how it could affect both the WAC and the Mountain West Conference.

"We talked for an hour or so, and I asked about a lot of that," Livengood said. "The hard thing, if you think back, is this thing can all change by the time you and I get done talking and hang the phone up."

Now Livengood is left simply to sympathize for Benson.

Things went from great to awful just that fast Wednesday for Benson. He saw the promise of a potentially powerful league with BYU joining and Boise State maybe coming back turn to shambles. Boise State kept its word to join the MWC in 2011, Nevada-Reno and Fresno State joined them, and the WAC, which at one point in the late 1990s had 16 members, was down to six by dinnertime.

"There was a time (this summer) when we were legitimately sure that Texas, Texas A&M and Oklahoma were going to be members of the Pac-10," Livengood added. "You just don't know. I still think there's some things to happen. It makes it hard from your standpoint to know or figure it all out. With the immediacy of news, what might be really solid at 8 p.m. tonight could change at 10:30. Literally, these things happen that fast."

Either way, there is a future to plan for, and UNLV feels as if it has plenty of reasons to be excited.

The main reason? In-state foe UNR will now be in UNLV's league, adding some more intrigue to the school's top rivalry.

The potential is endless, as now the two will meet twice each year in men's basketball and keep their annual football series going. However, the option could be there for the two schools to meet on the gridiron in the final game of the regular season.

"I think it's great that our intrastate rival will be in the same league with us," UNLV president Neal Smatresk said. "We meet every year anyhow. We have a wonderful competition. It's good for the state, good for our institution and good for our conference.

"We've considerably improved our posture as a league."

The story is far from complete, though, as the league's landscape could change some more in the near future, depending on what BYU decides to do.

It appeared early Wednesday that BYU was all but gone from the MWC and set to opt for independence in football and a membership with the WAC in all other sports, but the Cougars could opt to return.

Of course, they could stick with their original plan and align with another league, such as the West Coast Conference.

The main concern for many UNLV fans regarding BYU's future has to do with men's basketball, where the two schools in recent years have built up what is now regarded as one of the West Coast's top rivalries.

Rebels coach Lon Kruger said he'd be all for continuing to meet the Cougars should they leave. The same would go for Utah, who accepted an invitation to the Pac-10 back in June, which will begin in the fall of 2011.

"It's pretty convenient travel with Utah and BYU, to fly into Salt Lake City, short bus ride and play," he said. "We like playing non-conference games generally in the same region, get out and back, and play quality people. BYU and Utah both fit that."