Ignorant outsiders dismiss MWC

T en years later, the Mountain West Conference welcomed 2009 by having the most significant week in its history, or at least since anybody 10 miles beyond the Wasatch Mountains didn't need rabbit ears to watch The Mtn.

But will anyone remember it next week? It's doubtful.

Ten years later, more and more people outside the league are noticing the progress made in major sports within it. Just not enough people. In a matter of days, a conference searching for national respect earned the following wins:

• Dec. 31: UNLV and Utah defeated Top 25 basketball programs, with the Rebels winning at Louisville and the Utes at home against Gonzaga.

• Jan. 2: Utah's football team staked claim to an Associated Press national championship it should win but likely will not -- and shoved Nick Saban's foot profoundly in his mouth -- with a 31-17 victory over Alabama in the Sugar Bowl.

Think if Brigham Young's basketball team had been able to take out Wake Forest in Provo on Saturday. Those in the Mountain West offices would have floated to work Monday rather than driven.

"Wins like Vegas and Utah had were great," San Diego State basketball coach Steve Fisher said. "We need to keep scheduling these teams of this caliber and do what those clubs did. Beating them helps all of us."

It's an important and sometimes forgotten point. If you are a fan of the conference and a person who desires its national standing to improve any decade soon, you should have been wildly cheering every Utah first down against Alabama and every BYU basket against Wake Forest.

Conference rivalries over time create hostile feelings toward opposing teams, players and sometimes even wives (see Cummard, Sarah). But to not want Mountain West teams to win nonleague games of great significance -- no matter the name across the jersey -- is short-sighted and dense for those who claim to support any of the league's nine members.

The conference takes enough negative shots from people like Saban, and countless others.

Saban isn't the first or 1,000th coach to utter words he later regretted, but his pre-Sugar assertion that Alabama was the only team to finish the regular season unbeaten in a "real BCS conference," again cuts to a larger issue than merely discounting Utah or any other non-BCS program as wannabes.

It's why Louisville still resides in the Top 25 basketball poll and UNLV doesn't, despite the Cardinals losing on their own court to a Rebels team missing its leading scorer. It's why one voter left Louisville at No. 14 following the UNLV loss, and the Rebels off his ballot.

It is why -- as reported this week by Yahoo! Sports columnist Dan Wetzel -- some voters in the Harris Interactive Poll (a determining factor in the BCS title matchup) admitted they hadn't watched Utah's football team at all during its perfect season. Hadn't seen the Utes one time before the Sugar Bowl. Not one snap.

Some of it is laziness and lack of attention by voters. Some of it is a groundless perception of the Mountain West's overall strength compared to BCS conferences, who are annually promoted by national media outlets that own broadcasting rights to the six power leagues. Some of it is an old-school attitude that hasn't made an allowance for the parity that now defines college athletics.

What can the Mountain West do?

The Utah attorney general said he is considering an antitrust case against the BCS, but that move should've been made years ago. Members of non-BCS leagues once had a perfect opportunity to sue when the cartel was first formed, but it would be awfully difficult for anyone to now argue a point of conspiracy when all 11 Division I-A conferences agreed to the current system.

It's not a sexy solution, but it's the only practical one: Keep winning. Keep beating the Louisvilles and Gonzagas in basketball and Alabamas in football. Keep having football seasons that produce 6-1 records against the Pac-10 and end with three teams in the Top 16 in the BCS standings. Keep proving the MWC to the point when BCS and Top 25 and NCAA Tournament seeding snubs become embarrassing to those unwilling to accept the league's advancements.

You should begin to see a change in, oh, another 10 years or so. Maybe.

That's how unshakable the majority opinion of a non-BCS conference remains. That's how narrow a view many still hold, no matter how many weeks the Mountain West has like the one that straddled 2008 and 2009.

During which the San Diego State women's basketball team also beat No. 4 Texas.

The Longhorns dropped to No. 8 in this week's poll.

The Aztecs? They received two votes.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at 383-4618 or egraney@reviewjournal.com.