So after the Fresno St. loss to USC last night, I was looking at them and their conference schedule when I see Louisiana Tech.
Wha? Louisiana isn’t Western. I mean it doesn’t even fit in with the rest of the conference.
Fresno State
Boise State
Nevada
Louisiana Tech
Hawaii
Idaho
San Jose State
Utah State
New Mexico State
So why is Louisiana Tech in the Western Athletic Conference?
It wanted to be in a conference and LA Tech didn’i want to join C-USA (or wasn’t wanted) and the Sun Belt is too small fry. Besides you get a trip to Hawai’i every couple of years in the WAC.
When the teams that now make up the Mountain West bolted, the WAC started accepting any school with a pulse.
Conferences have pretty much given up on the regional identifications that used to knit the member schools together. The ACC used to stretch from Maryland in the north to Georgia in the south (pre-Florida State). It now covers an area from Boston (!) to Miami. The Big East shifted its center of gravity to the west when they added Louisville, Cincinnati, Marquette and DePaul.
I think it’s a shame, but the truth of the matter is that conferences which were set up in an era of regional radio broadcasts, limited team travel budgets and intense local fan participation now cater to a national television audience, fly athletes first class and put the hometown fan’s access to the team and the games a distant second to TV income and building a national brand.
I think that few colleges can afford to fly their athletes first class. They have team charters for the most part, but there are too many people to fly first class.