I’d like to say I’m shocked, that I’m surprised, that my head is shaking in amazement.
But I can’t. I knew this whole Mountain West-CSTV deal was a fraud from the get-go.
Two years ago, it was announced that the Mountain West was leaving ESPN for CSTV, a then-fledgling 24-hour network devoted exclusively to college sports. The MWC, which had been appearing on ESPN since its inception in 1999, was getting nearly double the money at $82 million from CSTV. Almost as important was the promise that the days of 10 p.m. starts for basketball games were history. The Mountain West would be a prime time conference, playing at 7 or 8 p.m.
The presidents were happy because they were getting more bucks. The athletic directors were happy because it meant no more calls from irate geriatric boosters who didn’t get to bed until 1 in the morning after attending a late-night tip-off.
The coaches? For the most part, they bought the party line and said nice things about CSTV. Never mind that when they went into a recruit’s home and told them that if they came to their school, they’d be able to be seen on CSTV, it would invoke the predictable response, “What’s CSTV?”
It all sounded good, didn’t it? One problem. It’s time to play on CSTV, and CSTV isn’t available in the league’s two key markets.
That’s right, there’s no CSTV on the Cox Cable systems in San Diego and Las Vegas. As an addendum, you can’t get CSTV in most of Fort Worth, where TCU resides.
Further, you can’t get “the mtn.” the league’s primary channel which is all-Mountain West all-the-time on a satellite dish, much less many of the cable systems. That you can’t watch a BYU-Air Force women’s soccer game may not be a crime, but you might not be thrilled if the BYU-Air Force men’s basketball game was blacked out because “the mtn.” wasn’t on your cable system. And there’s a hell of a lot of hoops being programmed for “the mtn.”
For two years, commissioner Craig Thompson was confident that when the league’s 2006 football season kicked off Sept. 2, CSTV would be on Cox in Vegas and San Diego.
Oops.
Naturally, each side blames the other for the void. Cox refuses to be bullied by on-line petitions and force its customers to swallow an $8 to $10 per month increase on their bill so they can meet CSTV’s financial demands. CSTV claims Cox is being unreasonable and is derelict in acquiescing to the needs of its customers.
Will this get resolved by November when basketball season tips off? Who knows? Remember, this whole CSTV thing was more of a football decision than a basketball decision, just like virtually every major decision the MWC has made.
You want reality? Here’s the reality – ESPN hardly showed MWC football because Mountain West football sucks, save for the occasional magical season like Utah’s two years ago. Therefore, the league had no choice but to go elsewhere to get anyone to watch it play football.
Unlike football, basketball does not suck in the Mountain West and it deserves better. Brandon Heath is an exciting player, and people should be able to watch the standout San Diego State guard. Air Force plays with great intensity and they shoot threes like it’s going out of style. The Falcons shouldn’t toil in anonymity. BYU has a nice team. UNLV’s got a human shot-blocking machine in Joel Anthony who fans would get a kick out of watching. Wyoming’s Brandon Ewing is a rising star.
This isn’t a league of stiffs. Quite the contrary, this is shaping up to potentially be the Mountain West’s best basketball season ever. I wouldn’t be surprised to see four teams go to the NCAA Tournament. San Diego State, BYU, Air Force, UNLV and Utah are all improved and all have a chance to go. That’s how good the league is this year as all the youngsters throughout the conference have grown up.
If I’m San Diego State’s Steve Fisher and UNLV’s Lon Kruger, I’m peeved, and that’s putting it nicely. Thompson and CSTV sold them a false bill of goods. They can’t even look a kid in the eye on a home visit and tell them they’re going to be on TV in the city where they go to school.
How weak is that?
UNLV has been to the NCAA Tournament twice since going to the Final Four in 1991. Yet, ESPN still put the Runnin’ Rebels on every year when it would have been easier to bypass them for another ACC game. The annual Las Vegas Show Down guaranteed UNLV at least one prime-time national exposure on a network that not only was known as a national brand, it was available in Las Vegas!
But with the move to CSTV, UNLV lost its ESPN slot. Instead, the school hooked up with Basketball Travelers to put on a substitute three-day tournament called the “Duel in the Desert” that will have South Florida, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and Norfolk State. That’s a far cry from the 2004 doubleheader at the Thomas & Mack Center in which the Rebels played Oklahoma State and Gonzaga played Georgia Tech.
No, the Duel in the Desert won’t be seen on ESPN, thank God. It won’t be on CSTV, either. Not that that matters. What does matter is will UNLV and San Diego State fans be able to see their teams when conference play begins in January and the stakes are raised considerably?
The guess here is it will happen. It might have already happened by the time you read this. Meanwhile, conferences like the WAC and the West Coast Conference have slid into the Mountain West’s ESPN spot. That means we’ll get to see Nevada’s Nick Fazekas and Gonzaga’s Sean Mallon on Monday nights on ESPN instead of Heath and BYU’s Lee Cummard.
Trust me, you’ll be able to name more guys on Santa Clara’s roster or Utah State’s roster than Colorado State’s or Utah’s because of the exposure the WAC and the WCC will get on ESPN.
Unless something gets done quick, a conference that has a chance to be pretty darn good this season will be pretty obscure thanks to the great TV deal it made. It was as if Thompson was on the old TV game show “Let’s Make a Deal” and he traded in the brand new car for what was behind Door No. 2 and wound up taking home a mule. It’s a deal that’s so bad, the mule would be offended for being a party to it.
