The recent announcement that Utah State will soon be joining the Western Athletic Conference was as good as it gets for Ladell Andersen.
"It was my glorious day when that happened," he said.
Like the children of Israel, all it took was 40 years of wandering in the wilderness.
Forty years! When USU first applied for admission, the Cuban missile crisis was just around the corner and the Beatles were shocking parents everywhere. The old Skyline Conference was breaking up and a new, optimistic league called the WAC was on the way. Unfortunately, some schools got left out.
Utah State, for one.
Ever since then, theories have abounded as to why USU could never get in. Did it make some sort of social faux-pas?
Was it personal hygiene?
Whatever the reason, USU was frozen out for decades. Years passed, leagues came and went, but nothing happened. Finally, the "glorious day" arrived that former Aggie basketball coach and athletic director Andersen awaited. UTAH STATE, COME ON DOWN! It was a judicious move by the WAC. Similar sizes, resources and regional rivalries made the arrangement logical. The only drawback: Not a single member of the original WAC remains in that league.
None of the old gang was even there to welcome the Aggies into the club.
Ask any longtime Aggie fan about "the conspiracy."
He'll tell you flat-out they were blackballed by their brothers down the road. Petty jealousy, he'll conclude, kept USU from playing in the same conference as Utah and BYU, not economics.
"We tried and tried to get in, and they would never let us in because of BYU's and Utah's jealousy of any success we had up there," said Andersen.
Four decades seems a long time to hold a grudge.
Still, nobody has entirely forgiven Lee Harvey Oswald either.
It actually started in 1962, 41 years ago. A handful of mid-sized Western colleges banded to form what would become a truly colorful conference. Utah, BYU, New Mexico, Arizona, Arizona State and Wyoming signed on.
USU didn't — mainly because it wasn't offered that option.
The Aggies could have lived with that if other things hadn't ensued. For instance, in 1967 the WAC expanded by two teams, adding UTEP and Colorado State. No invitation was forthcoming to USU. After Arizona and ASU left for the Pac-10, the league invited San Diego State, Hawaii and Air Force.
Time after time USU petitioned for WAC admission, to no avail.
Andersen, who was athletic director for 10 years in Logan, remembers compiling booklets explaining how the school drew more fans and had more success than teams such as Wyoming, CSU and UTEP. But the answer was always the same. League presidents said they didn't want to be dominated by three schools from the same state. (Even though there are four schools from North Carolina in the ACC.) Even in the 1990s, when the WAC ballooned to 16 teams, there was no call for USU. Television had changed the landscape of college football and the WAC went searching for new TV markets. That eliminated Logan, which was already in the same market as Utah and BYU.
Now retired and living in St. George, Andersen has nothing to hold back. He was there. He was also an assistant coach at Utah and head coach at BYU, yet remains convinced a conspiracy existed. In the 1960s, USU was having success in both football and basketball against its instate rivals.
"I think (Utah and BYU) were hypocritical, in that they said, 'We voted for you but no one else did.' That's the phoniest deal in the world,"
Andersen said.
His contention is they did vote to include USU, but convinced other schools to vote no.
"I've always said BYU and Utah had enough power and strength through all those years and expansions to get USU in," Andersen continued.
"Sometimes they claimed they didn't have the power, but I know better. They were the power."
Arnie Ferrin, who was Utah's athletic director for 10 years in the 1970s and 80s disagrees, saying the inclusion of USU would have greatly helped keeping costs down.
"I can't speak for BYU, but in my case it would have been wonderful for us to have USU in the conference," he said. He added, "I don't believe there was ever an effort to exclude them."
That's their stories and they're sticking with them.
Was there really a conspiracy?
All I know is the Aggies didn't get into the club until Utah and BYU got out.
E-mail: rock@desnews.com