Big West Officials Discuss Proposal to Divide Conference for Football

Big West Conference athletic directors Monday discussed a proposal to split the conference into two divisions for football and reduce the number of league games required of its eight schools.

Athletic directors, meeting in Las Vegas, focused their attention almost exclusively on football, looking at ways to upgrade programs and increase attendance, which has sagged at several schools and jeopardized the conference’s Division I-A standing.

Schools presently play a full, round-robin schedule, meaning they have seven conference games, but the conference schedule likely will be reduced to five or six games, said Jim Haney, Big West Conference commissioner.

Haney said the athletic directors will meet again July 31-Aug. 1 in Los Angeles, but probably wouldn’t make any firm recommendations until November.

By reducing the number of conference games, Big West schools could schedule more contests against regional rivals or national-caliber opponents, which athletic directors believe would be more attractive for spectators.

One proposal would split the conference into two groups--the Northern California teams (Fresno State, San Jose State and University of the Pacific) and the out-of-state teams (Nevada Las Vegas, New Mexico State and Utah State). Cal State Fullerton would be placed in one group and Cal State Long Beach in the other.

Schools would play each team in their group, giving them three games, and either two or three teams in the other group, giving them five or six conference games. Out-of-division opponents would be determined on a rotating basis.

“I didn’t see any problem with that,” Fullerton Athletic Director Ed Carroll said. “That would allow us to schedule additional nonconference games, and that would be attractive to us.”

Fullerton and Long Beach have had the lowest attendance figures in the conference in recent years. The Titans averaged 3,766 fans for four home games and 14,375 for seven road games last season.

For the conference to maintain its Division I-A status, five of the eight teams must average either 17,000 fans for home games or have a 30,000-seat stadium and average 20,000 for all games at least once in the four previous seasons.

Haney said Fresno State, San Jose State and Utah State meet the criteria virtually every year. UNLV, Pacific and New Mexico State make it about once every four years, Haney said, and Fullerton and Long Beach have never met the criteria.

Expansion also was discussed at the meeting. San Diego State, a member of the Western Athletic Conference, has expressed a desire to join the Big West in all sports but football. The Aztecs want to play football as an independent, thus retaining their College Football Assn. membership benefits.

“There’s a desire among athletic directors for expansion as long as it’s tied into football,” said Dennis Farrell, Big West associate commissioner. “But with the CFA possibly becoming an endangered species, that might make the Big West more attractive to San Diego State in terms of football.”

The CFA is a group of 66 of the nation’s major college football-playing universities whose primary purpose is to negotiate television contracts for member schools. But with Notre Dame’s recent decision to secede from the CFA and negotiate its own TV deal with NBC and talk of other conferences negotiating their own TV deals, the CFA’s future is in doubt.

“Things are definitely in a state of flux nationally,” Carroll said. “We’re talking about ways to position ourselves to take advantage of the situation.”