This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2010, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The decision came 10 weeks later and ultimately resulted in the desertion of one conference and the partial destruction of another, but the BYU Cougars now can say they will be playing basketball in the same markets as Utah.
Just like the Utes when they join the Pac-10 for the 2011-12 season, BYU will be visiting southern California, the Bay Area, Oregon and Washington for West Coast Conference competition.
In the Cougars' case, that means games against San Diego, Loyola Marymount and Pepperdine, not USC and UCLA; San Francisco, Saint Mary's and Santa Clara, not Cal and Stanford; Portland, not Oregon and Oregon State; and Gonzaga, not Washington and Washington State.
So BYU's move will be chronicled in some big-city newspapers today; the question is, on which page?
Yet those are some very good basketball schools in attractive places, which is why I wrote two weeks ago that the WCC made more sense for BYU than joining whatever remained of the Western Athletic Conference.
As I said then, and am sure to say again, BYU's joining the parochial schools of the WCC is the greatest collaboration of Mormons and Catholics since the Cougars enlisted Jim McMahon and Clay Brown to beat Southern Methodist with a last-second touchdown pass in the 1980 Holiday Bowl.
It was apparent that even with the collapse of their original plan to become independent in football while joining the WAC in other sports, BYU administrators had gone too far down that road to completely turn back. So the news of independence is not as much of a story as what this means for the basketball program.
In that sense, I really like BYU joining the WCC. What I don't like is the collateral damage, how BYU working with Utah State and the WAC ended up hurting everybody involved.
Regardless of who's to blame in this game of promoting self-interests, there are losers: BYU's football program, which now faces much greater scheduling challenges without WAC anchors; Utah State's athletic program, left in a weakened WAC; and the WAC itself, which was going to be nicely positioned for the future before losing Nevada and Fresno State to the Mountain West's counterattack.
Every aspect of that fallout is unfortunate. The only response, I suppose, is to give MWC commissioner Craig Thompson credit for salvaging his league by grabbing the two WAC schools, even though that did not keep BYU from leaving. The Mountain West map now looks kind of funny with Utah as a flyover state, wouldn't you say?
It would be nice if the MWC was compelled to add two schools to create a 12-team conference and sought out Utah State, even if the plight of the Aggies is such that they keep joining leagues once BYU and Utah have left them.
Amid everything, there was no chance BYU still would align itself with a six-team WAC that spreads from Louisiana to Hawaii. Travel will be much more convenient in the West Coast, which also offers a higher level of basketball, similar (if smaller) institutions to BYU and a favorable ESPN contract — even if that means a return to late Monday night games.
The WCC already is a strong basketball league, and BYU will make it better. The quaint gyms that characterize the conference may not rival the Pac-10's facilities, but the quality of play is comparable.
The difference between Utah's and BYU's new homes is obvious: The Pac-10 offers great football; the WCC conducts no football. BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe will have to work like crazy to fill out a 12-game football schedule, but he clearly is willing to do it.
And while football drives everything in college athletics these days, the tradition and recent success of BYU basketball merited good treatment in this transition. The WCC provides everything that coach Dave Rose's program deserves. It's just that when Rose's team visits Portland, BYU will be playing in the 4,852-seat Chiles Center, not the Rose Garden.