Woodling: Big West ‘bus-stop league’

By Chuck Woodling     Mar 20, 2003

? OK, folks, raise your hands if you can name two schools in the Big West Conference. All right, how about one?

If you’ve been paying close attention to Kansas University’s first-round foe in the NCAA Tournament, you know Utah State is attached to the Big West. The other nine schools in the league, except for Idaho, are located in California.

“We’re a California bus-stop league,” said Mike Strauss, Utah State’s sixth-year sports information director.

All aboard for Irvine, Santa Barbara, Stockton, Northridge, Long Beach, Riverside, Fullerton and San Luis Obispo.

“Our league situation, well …” Utah State coach Stew Morrill said. “We’d need a couple of hours to explain that, or at least our AD would.”

Utah State’s athletic director, it turns out, is perhaps the most famous former sports information director in America.

About a decade ago, Rance Pugmire was SID at Idaho — hired there, incidentally, by former KU athletic department staffer Gary Hunter, who was Idaho’s AD at the time — and Pugmire was in charge of an NCAA Tournament regional post-game media session.

Pugmire’s job was to introduce the head coach and two designated players, then recognize media who desired to ask questions.

On this fateful occasion, Pugmire was informed the coach of the team that had just been defeated wouldn’t be coming to the media session. Then as members of the media began to grouse and rise from their chairs, the coach suddenly walked up the stairs and onto the dais, sat down and immediately began to ream Pugmire.

Yep, it was Bob Knight, then at Indiana, and Knight’s mean-spirited, profanity-laced chastisement of Pugmire was played over and over again on national television, further cementing Knight’s reputation as a thoughtless jerk.

For Pugmire, though, there was 15 minutes of fame, and later salvation.

“They fined Knight $30,000,” Pugmire told me Wednesday night before Utah State’s practice, “and I got to work three more (NCAA) tournaments.”

A couple of years later, Pugmire moved to Utah State as the school’s assistant athletic director, then took over the department in 1999.

Today, the man who survived the fire and brimstone of Bob Knight is presiding over the gradual departure of Utah State from the Big West Conference, mainly because USU has an NCAA Div. I-A football program and none of the other Big West schools do.

You would think the Aggies would be anxious to join either the Western Athletic Conference or the Mountain West Conference for reasons of geography if nothing else, rather than play as a football independent as they have been.

Wrong. Pugmire worked a deal with the Sun Belt Conference.

The Sun Belt, a league composed of schools in the South? Utah State playing in the Sun Belt would be like Kansas playing in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

But the Aggies will be making trips to such far-flung meccas as Louisiana-Monroe and Middle Tennessee State.

“You have to get on a plane anyway,” Pugmire said. “It’s all the same.”

Closer to home, the Aggies will play at Nebraska again this fall for a windfall. Nebraska will pay $450,000 for potential Utah State fodder.

“That contract was made in 1997,” Pugmire said. “That was the going rate then. I have a game in 2004 for a lot more than that.”

At least we know Utah State has priced itself out of Kansas’ league. The Jayhawks have to pay upwards of $250,000 just to bring in a Division I-AA school like Jacksonville (Ala.) State this autumn.

No, Jacksonville isn’t in the Sun Belt Conference. But Utah State will be.

Woodling: Big West ‘bus-stop league’

By Gary Bedore     Mar 20, 2003

? OK, folks, raise your hands if you can name two schools in the Big West Conference. All right, how about one?

If you’ve been paying close attention to Kansas University’s first-round foe in the NCAA Tournament, you know Utah State is attached to the Big West. The other nine schools in the league, except for Idaho, are located in California.

“We’re a California bus-stop league,” said Mike Strauss, Utah State’s sixth-year sports information director.

All aboard for Irvine, Santa Barbara, Stockton, Northridge, Long Beach, Riverside, Fullerton and San Luis Obispo.

“Our league situation, well …” Utah State coach Stew Morrill said. “We’d need a couple of hours to explain that, or at least our AD would.”

Utah State’s athletic director, it turns out, is perhaps the most famous former sports information director in America.

About a decade ago, Rance Pugmire was SID at Idaho — hired there, incidentally, by former KU athletic department staffer Gary Hunter, who was Idaho’s AD at the time — and Pugmire was in charge of an NCAA Tournament regional post-game media session.

Pugmire’s job was to introduce the head coach and two designated players, then recognize media who desired to ask questions.

On this fateful occasion, Pugmire was informed the coach of the team that had just been defeated wouldn’t be coming to the media session. Then as members of the media began to grouse and rise from their chairs, the coach suddenly walked up the stairs and onto the dais, sat down and immediately began to ream Pugmire.

Yep, it was Bob Knight, then at Indiana, and Knight’s mean-spirited, profanity-laced chastisement of Pugmire was played over and over again on national television, further cementing Knight’s reputation as a thoughtless jerk.

For Pugmire, though, there was 15 minutes of fame, and later salvation.

“They fined Knight $30,000,” Pugmire told me Wednesday night before Utah State’s practice, “and I got to work three more (NCAA) tournaments.”

A couple of years later, Pugmire moved to Utah State as the school’s assistant athletic director, then took over the department in 1999.

Today, the man who survived the fire and brimstone of Bob Knight is presiding over the gradual departure of Utah State from the Big West Conference, mainly because USU has an NCAA Div. I-A football program and none of the other Big West schools do.

You would think the Aggies would be anxious to join either the Western Athletic Conference or the Mountain West Conference for reasons of geography if nothing else, rather than play as a football independent as they have been.

Wrong. Pugmire worked a deal with the Sun Belt Conference.

The Sun Belt, a league composed of schools in the South? Utah State playing in the Sun Belt would be like Kansas playing in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

But the Aggies will be making trips to such far-flung meccas as Louisiana-Monroe and Middle Tennessee State.

“You have to get on a plane anyway,” Pugmire said. “It’s all the same.”

Closer to home, the Aggies will play at Nebraska again this fall for a windfall. Nebraska will pay $450,000 for potential Utah State fodder.

“That contract was made in 1997,” Pugmire said. “That was the going rate then. I have a game in 2004 for a lot more than that.”

At least we know Utah State has priced itself out of Kansas’ league. The Jayhawks have to pay upwards of $250,000 just to bring in a Division I-AA school like Jacksonville (Ala.) State this autumn.

No, Jacksonville isn’t in the Sun Belt Conference. But Utah State will be.

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