Big West Choice Is Obvious : Athletics: Dennis Farrell, who has 12 years of experience with the conference, is named commissioner.

Dennis Farrell, a choice so popular that no other candidates were considered, was named commissioner of the Big West Conference Wednesday.

Farrell, 41, associate Big West commissioner for the past four years and an assistant commissioner for four years before that, has worked in the conference office for more than 12 years.

“You don’t work somewhere for 12 years and not know the history and the past of the place,” Farrell said. “You don’t work anywhere this long without it becoming somewhat a labor of love.”

Farrell was a finalist for the commissioner’s job when Jim Haney was hired in 1988. When Haney announced last month he would resign to become executive director of the National Assn. of Basketball Coaches, a search committee decided to interview Farrell before considering any other candidates.

“I was really quite flattered they set up the process the way they did,” Farrell said. “After what happened four years ago when I was a finalist, I wasn’t sure what I would do if I had to go through that.”

Despite finishing among the runners-up to Haney in 1988, Farrell stayed on at the conference as Haney’s top aide. He has been the conference expert on NCAA rules and their interpretation, and also has been the director of scheduling and conference championships, including the conference basketball tournaments.

Farrell, who agreed to a four-year contract at an annual salary of $115,000, cites the conference’s football stature--on shaky ground since Cal State Long Beach dropped football after last season and Fresno State defected to the Western Athletic Conference--as his primary concern.

“My top priority right now is the solidity of football,” Farrell said. “It’s the sometimes delicate thread that is continuing to hold the conference together. Without football, the schools that want to have football programs would be splintering off. . . . From a stability of the conference standpoint, we have to stabilize football.”

In attempts to bolster the football competition after losing Long Beach and Fresno, the Big West created a football “consortium”--adding such far-flung schools as Arkansas State, Louisiana Tech, Northern Illinois and Southwest Louisiana to the group of Big West schools that sponsor football.

Though there had been some consideration of the conference competing in football at a level lower than NCAA Division I-A, that talk is on hold, Farrell said.

“With this consortium we’ve put together, we’re committed to 1-A,” he said, adding that he hopes to expand the alliance to 12 to 16 teams, split into two regional divisions.

In another attempt to strengthen the football conference after the end of its long-time alignment with the California Bowl in Fresno, Farrell recently helped establish the Las Vegas Bowl, which will match the Big West and Mid-America conference champions in December.

He dismisses the contention of some observers that the Big West should abandon football and focus on the conference’s many outstanding programs in less visible sports, with an emphasis on men’s basketball, a relative strength.

“Basically what you’d be doing is cutting loose the seven schools that want to play football. They’d probably latch on wherever they could with a total conference,” Farrell said.

Farrell expressed concern for the Cal State Fullerton football program, which is on tenuous financial ground after nearly being eliminated after the 1990 season.

“I certainly understand why they struggle for alumni support and fan support,” he said. “I still feel Fullerton football is important to the conference because of its visibility in Southern California. All the schools recruit in Southern California, and coaches can always tell recruits they’ll get to play in front of their family and friends once every (two years).

“(If Fullerton eventually drops football), I think it will affect us in terms of visibility in Southern California, an area I feel is very important.”

Among Farrell’s other points of emphasis:

--Marketing: “I think there are potential corporate dollars out there that are not being tapped,” he said. Farrell intends to hire someone with marketing strengths for the position he formerly held, and hopes to establish such programs as corporate sponsors for championships, as well as trade-out deals with hotels and airlines.

--Continued success of the basketball tournaments: Four groups bidding for the tournament after 1993 will make presentations to the conference next week. An agreement with Long Beach Arena is in effect through 1993, after which Long Beach is in contention with the Thomas & Mack Center and the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, as well as the ARCO Arena in Sacramento.

--Continued growth of all other sports: Baseball, softball, men’s and women’s volleyball and water polo are among the conference’s strongest programs.

--Gender equity: Equal opportunities for women and men have been a focus at many conference schools recently, including Cal State Fullerton, which reinstated its women’s volleyball program after settling a sex-discrimination lawsuit out of court, and UC Irvine, which announced plans to drop three men’s sports because of budget problems and to achieve equity with women’s sports.

A Big West long-range planning committee will discuss gender-equity at upcoming meetings.

“A lot of people wonder what the conference can do regarding gender equity,” Farrell said. “(But) you see the Big Ten has adopted 60-40 guidelines for its programs (requiring member schools to move toward gender equity.)

“The downside of it is that I hate to see men’s programs cut to reach that level. I’d like to think you can achieve it through growth rather than cutbacks.”

Robert C. Maxson, university president at Nevada Las Vegas and a member of the search committee that searched no farther than the Big West office, praised Farrell for his work in the conference.

“The Big West has an excellent new commissioner in Dennis Farrell,” Maxson said in a statement. “He has already proved himself to be an excellent athletic administrator in more than 12 years with the Big West, and we are confident he will meet the challenges of leading this dynamic conference.”