Earth to Big West: Basketball’s Your Game

Hapless Bowl ’90 is over, and we have a loser. It wasn’t even close--Cal State Fullerton under New Mexico State, 9-43, snapping the Aggies’ amazing streak of consecutive losses at 27 and leaving the Titans all alone atop the Division I-A football rankings, assuming you’re looking at them standing on your head.

They’re No. 106.

Out of deference to Gene Murphy, we’ll cut the one-liners there. Murphy is a good coach who deserves much, much better.

But a crossroads was reached Saturday in Las Cruces, and it raises a question that deserves immediate attention, along with an answer.

We’re not talking about Fullerton dropping football.

We’re talking about the Big West Conference dropping its football fixation.

The Big West has been flogging a dead horse for years, pretending to play grown-up football without the money, the resources, the players and the facilities necessary just to scrape together the dream. When Big West football is bad, it is as bad as it gets. No one in the Big West can be proud of Saturday’s Fullerton-New Mexico State fiasco.

But even when Big West football is good, no one takes it seriously. Saturday, the Big West also staged its championship game--Fresno State vs. San Jose State for a trip to the California Raisin Bowl for the thrill and prestige of getting to face . . . Central Michigan.

Hurry, get those tickets today.

You’d accuse the Big West of fooling itself, except it consigned itself to national obscurity by agreeing to the bowl tie-in with the Mid-American Conference in the first place. Today, that’s how the rest of the country views Big West football--the Toledos and the Ball States of the Pacific.

And now, with the sport braced for the dawning of the Age of the Super Conference, Big West football has hit a wall it is never going to ascend or obliterate. It is time the Big West faced facts, called off the sham, cut its losses and let San Jose State and Fresno State go free.

It is time the Big West went the way of the Big East:

Basketball first, second and third . . . and let the football programs fall where they may.

Right now, the Big West has a first-in-a-lifetime opportunity to capitalize on an NCAA basketball championship, even if Nevada Las Vegas can’t. Last April, after UNLV nuked Duke in Denver, the Big West grabbed the nation’s attention at last. If it wants to keep it--and the Big West has two more top 25-type programs at New Mexico State and Cal State Long Beach--it had better do something about its football-and-chain.

In San Jose and Fresno, the Big West has two viable, thriving, year-in and year-out legitimate Division I-A football programs. It used to have three, but San Diego State got smart and jumped to the WAC in 1978. San Jose and Fresno are making noises about testing the same waters, and the Big West would do best to step aside.

Of course, without San Jose and Fresno, Big West football would have to be reclassified Division I-AA. So let it. There’s nothing wrong with playing Division I-AA football. Some of Gene Murphy’s best friends play Division I-AA football. Playing Division I-AA football doesn’t make you a bad person.

Fullerton would have room to breathe and grow in Division I-AA. So would New Mexico State and Long Beach, which needed a PR gimmick as outlandish as George Allen to resuscitate its program.

How could that be any less desirable than the current state of affairs, with five of the Big West’s eight football-playing schools unable to crack the top 90? Before Saturday, one national poll had the University of the Pacific at No. 91, followed by Long Beach at 93, UNLV at 98 and the Fullerton-New Mexico anchor at 105 and 106.

The conference clearly sought to emulate the Big East in 1988 when it changed its name from the Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. The name has caught on, helping the Big West garner equal billing with the Big East and the Big 10 on ESPN’s periodic “Big Monday” basketball triple-headers.

Now, it should take the next step.

The Big East is a conference with its priorities in order. It exists for basketball, first and foremost, and is regarded as the heaviest of all college basketball heavyweights, depending on how one feels about the ACC at a given moment.

Big East schools also play football--on three levels. Boston College, Pittsburgh and Syracuse are Division I-A independents. Connecticut and Villanova are members of the Division I-AA Yankee Conference. Georgetown and St. John’s play Division III football.

Break up the Big West the same way. Let San Jose and Fresno joust their big-time windmills as either football independents or part-time WAC tack-ons. If UNLV wants to follow, fine. Group the others under a Division I-AA heading, with maybe Cal State Northridge thrown in, so that the pigskin heads can keep their football while the conference can be called something other than the Big Drain.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars will be saved. Imagine what that could mean to Big West basketball: Better recruiting. Better arenas. Better names on the home schedule. How about UCLA at Fullerton instead of, as always, the other way around?

Imagine, someday, a Big East-Big West Challenge, with Georgetown-UC Irvine at the Bren Center. OK, OK, bad example.

Imagine, someday, a Big East-Big West Challenge, with Syracuse-Long Beach at the Long Beach Arena.

There.

It could happen here.

Big West basketball is closer to prime time than it has ever been before. The final leap isn’t unfathomable. Unlike football, basketball programs can make major strides in a hurry, and with the exception of Irvine, every Big West school has been to the NCAA Tournament at least once since 1977.

The only thing standing in the way of Big West basketball is Big West football.

Sacrifice the Hapless Bowl for more trips to the Final Four.