Convince Wyoming This Was A Fair Deal Bowl Alliance Appears Mercenary With Lack Of Respect For The Wac

Somebody should start a campaign to save college football from the do-gooders who thought it needed fixing and wound up doing some serious damage instead.

For a hundred years or so, the sport got along very well without feeling any obligation for creating a national championship game. Not good enough, the proprietors decided.

And so the bowl alliance was born, forged from agreements between a fistful of megaconferences and bowls, a contrived attempt to give America a national champion.

Well, most of America, anyway. The America of the ACC, Big East, Big 12 and SEC, all partners in the alliance. The rest of America is on its own.

There is, for example, the Western Athletic Conference, dismissed as a sprawling league of also-rans, rarely considered as anything more than that.

Its champion is Brigham Young (13-1), ranked No. 5 in the country. When the alliance parceled out teams for the biggie bowls last weekend, BYU was passed over for the at-large spots and deposited in the afterthought Cotton Bowl.

And the fallout from the BYU decision had an immediate impact on WAC runner-up Wyoming, 10-2 and No. 22 in the poll.

“If they had gone to an alliance bowl like they should have, we would have gone to the Holiday,” Cowboys athletic director Lee Moon said.

But slotting BYU in the Cotton squeezed No. 8 Colorado and No. 13 Washington, both 9-2, into the Holiday, and unranked Utah (8-3) and Wisconsin (7-4) into the Copper.

And left Wyoming nowhere.

The Cowboys pushed BYU into overtime in the WAC championship game. Their reward was no invitations, not to the Holiday Bowl, not even to the old, reliable Copper Bowl.

Moon looks at the bowl grid and sees the Sun Bowl with Stanford (6-5) against Michigan State (6-5). He sees 29 teams with records not as good as Wyoming’s going to bowls and he wonders what exactly is going on here.

“Blame it on the alliance,” he said. “We’ve lost focus as to what we’re supposed to be doing. It used to be going to a bowl was a reward for the kids having a great season. We’ve lost that.

“I always thought winning nine or 10 games was pretty good. Evidently, 6-5 is excellent.”

So is 8-4 if you’re Texas and happen to knock off Nebraska to win one of the participating conference crowns.

“The alliance is so righteous, saying that it would put only the best teams in,” Moon said. “How is a team with four losses the best?”

The alliance has its favorites, too. Nebraska’s loss to Texas was hardly terminal. The No. 6 Cornhuskers are still going to the Orange Bowl. No. 7 Penn State is headed for the Fiesta. Both at-large picks were 10-2.

But both have more pizzazz than BYU or Wyoming. Who knows what might have happened if Notre Dame, with the most pizzazz of all, had not lost three games and all but eliminated itself?

Not surprisingly, the bottom line is bucks, seats sold. The Copper Bowl probably remembers that Wyoming brought along only about 3,500 fans for the 1993 game.

“I watched the alliance show,” Moon said. “And I heard them say ‘Penn State has so many pluses.’ Pluses means people. They just misspelled it. Let’s not say it’s for the kids. Say it’s for money.

“I watched the USC-Notre Dame game and heard them say a kid was kicking an $8 million field goal. We’ve brought back the $1 million foul shot. I think the alliance is a failure.”

Karl Benson, commissioner of the WAC, has offered the alliance a solution, a plan that would assure the WAC or Conference USA champs an automatic slot instead of an at-large spot, provided they were No. 12 or higher.

“Obviously, BYU would be selected, and the bowls wouldn’t have to conduct the beauty contest they did,” he said.

The alliance has not embraced the idea, and Benson said the WAC presidents are still considering legal opinions on whether the alliance violates antitrust laws.

The alliance system was sold as fail-safe, equipped with two at-large bids to take care of contingencies like Notre Dame, which is an independent, and any other contenders from the half-dozen conferences that were not included.

This year, it failed.

Among those left out of the alliance were the Big Ten and Pac-10, which have their own lucrative deal with the Rose Bowl. This year, that meant unbeaten Arizona State, No. 2 in the nation, and No. 4 Ohio State, which has just one loss, weren’t in the mix.

If Arizona State emerges from the Rose Bowl still undefeated, it will be a tough sell convincing some people that the winner of the alliance-approved Florida-Florida State game at the Sugar Bowl is the national champion.

And it will never convince the WAC that it was treated fairly.

So Wyoming will stay home for the holidays, and there is one plus to all of this. It hasn’t really started snowing in Laramie. Yet.