The last three times the Weber State and Southern Utah football teams played, they staged exciting, crowd-pleasing contests.
In 1993, the Wildcats held off SUU 43-39. The following year, Weber sneaked out of Cedar City with a 20-14 victory. Last Saturday, the Wildcats needed to stage a late rally to edge the T-Birds 33-32 in Ogden.Next year's game should really be something, shouldn't it?
If only there is a game next year.
Right now, the two Utah universities are not scheduled to play each other next year, nor any year in the near future. What has been and could continue to be a great in-state rivalry may cease to be.
While Southern Utah is anxious to keep up the rivalry, Weber State is lukewarm about it.
On the other hand, Weber State would dearly love to play its northern neighbor Utah State on a regular basis. The only problem is, the Aggies are not in favor of it, unless, of course, Utah and BYU agree to play Weber State.
On the other hand, while the Aggies are more than anxious to maintain their long-standing rivalries with Utah and BYU, some people from those schools would just as soon not have the Aggies on their schedule.
The folks at BYU would rather fill their limited nonconference schedule with "big-name" schools, while the Utes would probably just as soon play anybody else after getting beat two years running by the Aggies.
Talk about avoidance scheduling. Can't everybody in the state just get along and agree to play each other in football?
Granted, it makes no sense for BYU to play Southern Utah. Or Utah or Utah State to play SUU, for that matter, especially in Cedar City.
But why can't Weber State continue to play the T-Birds most years, since both are Division I-AA schools of a similar size?
And why can't the Aggies find room on their schedule for Weber State, especially now that they have more non-league games than Big West games?
"We want to basically schedule within our classification, which is I-A," said USU athletic director Chuck Bell. "We would be more likely to schedule Weber State if BYU and Utah did as well. Most of our people are not interested in being the only I-A school in the state to play Weber State."
But shouldn't Aggie fans be a lot more interested in playing Weber State than Idaho State, another I-AA team, which the Aggies faced two weeks ago?
"Our indication is that they don't," claims Bell. "Evidently the Utes don't either, because they've played some I-AA teams in recent years."
The Utes, however, have just half as many open dates to work with as the Aggies because they have eight Western Athletic Conference games.
Bruce Woodbury, director of athletic media relations at Utah and the person most responsible for scheduling, says the series with Utah State will continue as always, with games currently scheduled through 2002.
Woodbury said there have been no discussions about the possibility of scheduling Weber State. The two teams last played in 1984. "Our scheduling philosophy now is to get games with middle-of-the-pack Big 10, Pac-10 and Big 12 teams on a home-and-home basis," he said.
Among the teams the Utes are playing in the next few years are Arizona, Washington State and Wisconsin.
Southern Utah, however, would be more than glad to put Weber State on its schedule.
"We'd love to play them," said SUU coach Ray Gregory. "We'd rather play in the state of Utah. I don't care if we play two for one (two in Ogden, one in Cedar City). It's good for the state and I'd like it to be an annual event. People in the state should stand up and say, `We want to see these games.' "
Weber State coach Dave Arslanian says the recent expansion of the Big Sky has hurt the idea of an annual WSU-SUU game because there are now nine league teams, leaving just three non-league games. He said his school likes to go on the road for one "big-money" game a year, and if they do that, they can't afford to go down to Cedar City for another road game.
"Our schedule is pretty well set for next year, but I hope our people can get it worked out," Arslanian said. "I think all in-state games are great."
BYU athletic director Rondo Fehlberg says BYU and Utah State have agreed to cut back their schedules and not play every year. They will play off-and-on, however, six times between now and 2004.
"It's harder and harder to do," said Fehlberg of an annual BYU-USU series. "We only have three games to build a national schedule."
A few years ago, Cougar fans wanted to take the Aggies completely off the schedule. But BYU coach LaVell Edwards, an Aggie alum, always insisted his team should continue to play Utah State. The Aggies' upset win in 1993 quieted some of the talk about terminating the series.
The bottom line is this: BYU would rather not play Utah State and Utah State would rather not play Weber State and Weber State would rather not play Southern Utah for one main reason: the possibility of losing.
Until the in-state schools can stop worrying about being embarrassed by a loss to a school "beneath" them, the merry-go-round of schedule avoidance is likely to continue.