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The Chicago State Cougars will join the Western Athletic Conference on July 1, 2013, according to an announcement last week.
While this is a welcome opportunity for most CSU sports, I don’t feel that this is a good move for the basketball program.
For starters, the Cougars currently play in the Great West Conference, which has seen it’s fair share of turmoil. Two years ago the GWC had seven teams for basketball. Last year they cut down to six teams, and this year there are only five teams remaining.
After the 2011 GWC basketball tournament, the NCAA ruled that unless they can boost the conference to eight teams, they will no longer be allowed to host a tournament.
Aside from CSU, five other schools will also be leaving next summer. Once all of the moves are complete, the Great West will be left with one team, which puts the future of the conference in serious doubt.
Once Chicago State officially joins the WAC, it won’t be a pretty picture either.
That conference will be in rebuilding mode as they will be losing eight of their 10 current teams. Seven of those schools make up their football operations. After the current school year, the WAC will drop football from its list of fielded sports.
They will be without football for the first time in conference history.
When you consider that football is the WAC’s most profitable sport, the conference is sure to take a major financial hit.
The new teams that will join Chicago State in 2013 aren't much to cheer about either.
Texas-Pan American has not had a winning season since 2007-2008. They have had only two winning seasons since 2001-2002. At the moment, they are dead last in the Great West Conference.
Cal-State Bakersfield has only had one winning season since 2006-2007. Grand Canyon University will be moving up from Division-II, and history has taught us that this type of transition is not easy.
New Mexico State and Seattle University will now be the cornerstones for the Western Athletic Conference. So far, Utah Valley looks like the only other competitive team in next year’s WAC. The Wolverines have had seven winning seasons since 2004-2005, at the moment they are just one game below .500. It's not clear if that’s a good or a bad thing but we will soon find out.
Finally, we have Chicago State, an historically bad program with very few winning seasons in its entire history.
It has also gone through one head coach after another. The most successful CSU coach to date has been former Chicago Bull Craig Hodges back in the mid-'90s.
Many consider CSU an eyesore on the landscape of Chicagoland college basketball, which has always had a rich tradition.
Current head coach Tracy Dildy is trying his luck to turn the program into a contender. Last year CSU compiled a miserable 4-26 record. This year, so far, the Cougars are 3-8.
They are already on pace to at least tie last year’s win total. But the main issue here is that going from one fledgling conference to another doesn't make any sense.
It especially doesn't make sense when you’re trying to bring your most profitable sport out of mediocrity and into national prominence.
I understand that the Western Athletic Conference will be the biggest conference they will play in to date. But when you combine the instability of the conference with the struggles of a desperate program, it looks like a no-win situation for all parties involved.
Aside from the business and historical aspects working against them, they will also have to endure a harsh travel schedule. Next year they will be the easternmost school in WAC history. That means that they will be spending a lot of time out west. Not only could it effect the academic side of things, but it will take a mental and physical toll on the players.
I agree that Chicago State needs a change of scenery, but I don’t feel that moving to the WAC is the change they need.
I think that staying in the region would suit them best.
I say that they should either go back to the Summit League, or join either the Horizon League or Missouri Valley Conference.
College football is alive and well in the state of Utah.
The University of Utah just completed its first season in the Pac-12 and used its new conference affiliation to net its highest-rated class of recruits ever.
BYU had yet another 10-win season, its fifth in the past six years, and had most of its games televised nationally as part of a contract with ESPN that paid the school more for media rights than some conferences receive as a whole.
Utah State had its first winning season in over a decade and went to a bowl game.
One major Utah school that didn't have any success in football this past season was Utah Valley University, located in Orem, about 10 minutes away from BYU. That's because the school doesn't have a football team.
Utah Valley University (or UVU as its known in the state) is unique as far as Utah colleges goes. It only became a university four years ago, prior to which it was a junior college known as UVSC and served mainly as a gateway for students trying to transfer to BYU or Utah.
Since becoming a four-year university in 2008, UVU has flourished. It is now the largest public school in the state and second largest university overall in Utah, behind only nearby BYU. At over 33,000 students, UVU is very much a "big-time" university.
UVU's reputation and image, however, are far from "big time." It is almost unheard of outside of Utah and inside the state, it is widely viewed as a second-tier commuter school.
As a BYU student, I am acutely aware of the struggle for respect UVU faces. It is only a 10-minute (or 15, depending on traffic) drive down University Avenue between the BYU and UVU campuses. I have had roommates who attend UVU.
Yet you would hardly know that UVU had any students or supporters at all, judging from the local pride. BYU banners and logos adorn a plethora of local streets and businesses.
UVU logos are pretty much only ever seen on the school's campus, and the occasional billboard that the school pays for along the I-15 freeway that runs along one side of the UVU campus.
There is far more support locally for even the University of Utah, which is located an hour away in Salt Lake and is the bitter rival of local favorites BYU.
What UVU needs in order to rally its support base and gain some respect is something that the students and alumni can rally around as a source of school pride.
The school does have a Division I basketball team, but they compete in the Great West Conference, which doesn't receive a bid to the NCAA tournament. As such, they receive little support from their fans and don't really have a large effect on school pride.
A football team would provide UVU's students, fans and alumni with the point of pride that the school so desperately needs. Honestly, UVU's lack of a football team is one of the major contributing factors to its lack of respect. The sentiment in the state seems to be "If they can't even field a football team, they really aren't that major of a university."
College sports are a HUGE deal in Utah. The state does have two professional sports teams, the NBA's Utah Jazz and Real Salt Lake of MLS. However, there is no professional football team in a state whose inhabitants are football crazy.
The largest fanbases in the state easily belong to BYU and University of Utah, who are much more popular and well-supported than either the Jazz or Real Salt Lake.
So in a state whose inhabitants take college sports, and especially football, very seriously, it is really holding UVU back by not fielding a football team. Outsiders don't take the school seriously, and even its own students have very little school pride.
If UVU wants to gain respect in the state and give its students something to be proud of and rally around, it is going to need to add a football team.
The Provo-Orem area could very easily support another football team. Within an hour's radius of UVU's campus are nearly two million inhabitants, most of which are sports fans (sports are incredibly popular in the Mormon community, which accounts for the vast majority of the residents living in that one-hour radius of UVU).
At over 30,000 students, the school also has a large student body just waiting for something to rally around and be proud of.
Recruiting also wouldn't be much of a problem. Utah prospects such as Chase Hansen and Troy Hinds wound up spurning major football powers such as Nebraska, Michigan, Oklahoma and Stanford in order to stay in-state and play for Utah and BYU, respectively. There is plenty of local talent in Utah.
In addition, the Utah schools all have recruiting pipelines in the major recruiting centers of California and Texas, as well as nearby Arizona, Nevada and Idaho. UVU could certainly get plenty of recruits, if they had a football team. It's a case of "If you build it, they will come."
It's unclear what is holding back UVU from starting a football team. Sure, they probably wouldn't be on the level of in-state powerhouses BYU and U of U, but they could quickly become competitive with the amount of talent available and the thirst for sports that exists in the state.
If Utah Valley University wants to be viewed as a major university in the state of Utah and develop a large fanbase, it is time for the UVU Wolverines football team to become a reality.
The great conference realignment that college athletics has been undergoing over the last five or six years, triggered first by the ACC raid on the Big East and most recently by the Big Ten's decision to expand to 12, has led to some interesting geographic permutations. A legacy of earlier conference shuffling left the WAC stretching from Hawai'i to that decidedly western state of Louisiana, home of Louisiana Tech. Similarly, the Sun Belt includes those noted warm weather locales of Denver and Bowling Green, Kentucky (OK, Kentucky is a southern state but Denver?).
However, some of the latest conference memberships really stretch the idea of geography to its limits. With TCU's move from the Mountain West (you've seen the mountains in Ft. Worth right) to the Big East, we're now supposed to believe that Texas is in the east. However, no school more represents the absurdity of certain conference memberships, and how far removed we are from the days when conferences represented regional associations, than the relatively new Division I Great West Conference.
The Great West is basically a collection of schools around the country that recently upgraded their programs to Division I and consists of schools located in California, Texas, Utah, the Dakotas, Chicago and New Jersey. It began life as a football conference and now has 10 members, three of whom are football-only members. All of the schools have relatively small athletic department budgets which are strained by the travel costs associated with playing in a conference that is not only this spread out but also includes several cities not regularly served by nonstop airline routes.
It's college athletics' version of the high school losers' table, and until one of the cool kids takes pity on them, the member schools are stuck with each other, absurd travel costs and all. Such is the price of admission to the pot of gold associated with March Madness.
The above photo originally appeared at Utpabroncs.com.
On May 27, Ryan Marks was the recipient of good news and bad news.
The good news was that he is the new men's basketball coach at the University of Texas-Pan American. The bad news was that Marks is the new men's basketball coach at UTPA.
In less than a year, interim athletic director Ricky Vaughn has transformed UTPA into one of the worst-run athletics programs in the United States. In the last 10 months, 10 assistant or head coaches have resigned or didn't have their contracts renewed.
The previous men's basketball coach, Tom Schuberth, was fired a year removed from being selected as the NCAA Division I Independent Coach of the Year.
DeAnn Craft, the winningest coach in UTPA women's basketball history, resigned on May 15 when Vaughn told her that her contract would not be renewed unless the team won 18 games in 2009-10. Last year's group won 14 games, the most in team history.
If serving under an inept boss wasn't bad enough, Ryan Marks has to overcome other obstacles.
This time of year, coaches are putting their final touches to their recruiting efforts. Marks is just now getting started.
Officially speaking, UTPA is no longer an independent in men's basketball. The Broncs are now members of the Great West Conference. However, the conference will not be entitled to an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament until 2015.
Anything is possible, but it is highly unlikely a bid will come their way until then.
To make matters worse, the team is coming off a 10-17 season, and its best player, Emmanuel Jones, has completed his eligibility.
The odds are stacked against Coach Marks, but his background suggests he has a puncher's chance of succeeding.
For the past five seasons, Marks was the coach at St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas. While there, he had a record of 91-54 and led the Hilltoppers to the NCAA Division II basketball tournament three times.
Before becoming the head coach at St. Edward's, Marks was the coach at Southern Vermont College for three seasons. Under his leadership, the Mountaineers had their first 20-win season and first appearance in the NCAA Division III tournament.
Based on his track record, Ricky Vaughn will demand results immediately while not offering much support during the process.
I wish Coach Marks the best of luck. He is going to need it.
