SDSU’s Miller to Tout Regional-Play Plan

Fred Miller, San Diego State athletic director, will arrive at the Western Athletic Conference Council fall meetings in Denver today with the idea of convincing other WAC officials to regionalize sports other than football.

“We’re going after this thing,” Miller said. “Not just to benefit San Diego State. It will also benefit Texas El Paso, Wyoming, Colorado State . . .”

“It’s time to think differently.”

Under Miller’s plan, all sports except football would be split into divisions based on geography, and teams would play only others in their division. By doing this, schools would save money on travel.

“You don’t touch football,” Miller said. “Everything else has got to get into a cost-containment mode. . . .

“We need to get into tight regionalization. Our business is to provide the competitive experience. My belief is our conference, other than football, may be obsolete.”

If Miller is able to convince other WAC schools to re-align geographically, he would then like to conquer the rest of the west. He plans to speak informally with athletic directors from the Pacific 10, Big West and West Coast Conference about re-aligning some sports other than football.

“Should UCLA be playing basketball in Oregon? Should Arizona be playing baseball in Berkeley? I don’t know,” Miller said. “That’s a long way to go.

“I know we shouldn’t be playing baseball at Colorado State and Wyoming. Denver is an expensive trip. I’m concerned about all western universities.”

One of Miller’s tools for this meeting will be an overhead projector. He is bringing to Denver a stack of about 40 overhead charts detailing athletics in the western United States--maps, school locations, and breakdowns of which schools offer which sports.

“The WAC, the Pac 10, the Big West, the WCC, we all have transportation problems,” Miller said. “With the President’s Commission coming down hard on academics, we’ve got to keep kids in classes more.

“All I know is we’ve got to change our conference affiliations and merge. Call it the Big Pac West, I don’t know. I’ll talk to ADs (throughout) the West Coast.

“The presidents are going to hold the ADs accountable. We had damn well better get proactive. If the state of California has budget problems, I can damn well guarantee you Oregon is having them up there, along with Illinois, Michigan, Nebraska. . . .

“We are all in a recessionary mode. Call it what you choose to.”

But Miller says football should stay as is.

“Leave it alone,” he said. “But are we better off playing Long Beach State and UCLA in basketball than Colorado State and Wyoming? You bet.

Miller said that a typical basketball trip to Denver costs the athletic department $12,000 in airfare alone. SDSU makes the trip at least twice each basketball season. He said that if the school played Long Beach, for example, the team could drive there and back in one day and not even have to pay hotel costs.

But he said it would be nearly impossible to cut the fat out of football because there are “too many pressure points.”

He cited bowls, long-term scheduling contracts, television negoatiations and consortiums such as the College Football Assn., Pac 10-Big 10 alliance, and the “Notre Dame consortium of one.”

“Am I talking out of both sides of my face?” Miller asked. “No. Our football team plays Miami Nov. 30 and I know that if they have a good season and we have a good season, Nov. 30 is going to be a television date.

“When we play UCLA (Sept. 26 on ESPN), that’s $800,000 in TV receipts shared through the conference and the CFA.

“In basketball, it’s a whole different scenario. Now, we’re playing for the trophy, not the dough.”

A new NCAA formula for splitting its $1 billion basketball tournament television contract rewards a school in two areas: for “breadth and depth” of its athletic program (how many grants-in-aid and how many sports it offers); and for the basketball team’s performance over a rolling, six-year span of NCAA tournaments.

SDSU received word last week that it will collect $126,896 under the NCAA’s “breadth and depth” program and $94,827 for the WAC’s performance over the past six years in the NCAA basketball tournament.

“If we save $100,000 in transportation and put it in grants-in-aid, we save transportation costs, we gain class time, and we get a windfall from the NCAA,” Miller said.