JUST WHEN IT SEEMED the annexing and land-grabbing by college conferences had peaked out with the WAC's expansion last year, the announcement came Wednesday that there's more to come.
In the continued shuffling among college athletic programs, Southern Utah University declared it has found a home. A big, wide-open, continent-spanning home - but a home nonetheless. The American West Conference had disintegrated and the Thunderbirds were looking for new affiliation.SUU will join the Mid-Continent Conference next year. It now is on the way to becoming close personal friends with nine other teams scattered throughout the Midwest, Southeast and Northeast. The Thunderbirds will be eating Chicago deep-dish pizza, Alabama grits and New England bagels, perhaps all on the same road trip. They'll be in the same league as Western Illinois, Missouri-Kansas City, Troy (Ala.) State, Chicago State, Northeastern Illinois, Buffalo, Central Connecticut, Valparaiso (Indiana), Western Illinois and Youngstown (Ohio) State.
In other words, a whole lot of teams they previously knew nothing about. The nearest school to SUU is a dozen area codes away.
With SUU joining the MCC, the league has suddenly become the second-biggest conference in America. The WAC, which stretches from Hawaii to Tulsa, is unarguably the biggest conference on earth. It covers four time zones and nine states. It doesn't just cross the continent, it crosses an ocean. But now that the Thunderbirds are in the MCC, they're giving the WAC a run. The MCC covers three time zones and eight states. Not a bus trip on the schedule.
College sports have taken a new direction in recent years. Old, regional conferences have broken up and moved on to bigger, more expansive conferences. Thus, you have Conference USA, that not only covers Louisville and Memphis, but also Houston. You have the Big Ten, a midwestern league, that now includes Penn State. You have the Big East, that stretches from Boston to West Virginia to Miami.
In the newly expanded WAC, Tulsa, Rice and SMU can now consider Hawaii a sister institution. Likewise, Buffalo and Southern Utah may be separated by 2,000 miles, but not by philosophy. "It's a good fit for us athletically, the conference schools have solid academic standards and it will give our teams the chance to compete for championships in some of the country's largest cities," said SUU President Gerald R. Sherratt.
No longer do schools necessarily look in their general vicinity for close friends to play. Nowadays, an athlete can sign to play at Southern Utah and end up seeing the world without leaving his conference. You don't have to join the Army to see the world anymore, just join a college basketball team. Between the WAC and the MCC, they've pretty much covered the entire Western Hemisphere.
"It could be the answer to all of our dreams," continued Sherratt.
The motivation for such expansion is finding like-minded institutions, getting in a league where NCAA Tournament possibilities are stronger, receiving increased media exposure and, of course, decreasing expenses. Oddly enough, with air fares to major markets being generally cheaper than to remote outposts in the West, SUU can probably fly out of Las Vegas and get to, say, Chicago, cheaper than it could to Missoula. School officials estimate that the cost of basketball travel next year will be 25 percent lower than what it will be this year as an independent.
Assuming, of course, the league doesn't decide to add Hawaii-Hilo or the University of Paris.
"The dissolution of the American West Conference was one of the best things ever to happen to SUU," continued Sherratt.
Thus, the Thunderbirds are moving off once again. Once a small NAIA school, playing in the tiny Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference, they're now in a Division I conference playing teams from Kansas City to Buffalo.
All this means SUU will have to make some new friends. There won't be many close-by games with Colorado Northwestern or even Sacramento State. The Thunderbirds may not be playing their old friends from the next state over anymore, but they will be seeing the country. It's no longer a matter of proximity, it's a matter of expediency.