Towknie wrote:That isn't true. During the 80's the BW was at worst the 2nd best conference on the west coast. A school could schedule a bunch of cupcakes in non conference because the BW was so tough. So the BW brand name was so much better, schools would draw better and it was real attendance, none of this BS way of counting attendance.
Eateralum86 wrote:Let's be fair. Name a non-football school on the west coast, except Gonzaga, that has good student attendance at basketball games. I certainly can't name another school in the Big West that does well at the ticket office. You also are not factoring in that when you were a student (and to a lesser extent, when I was a student), the Big West was a viable multi-bid conference. It was to the benefit of the member schools to schedule tough OOC opponents, which drew fans to games, because they stood a good chance at getting an at-large bid. Also, if I'm not mistaken, UCI was the only non-football school in the conference back then. Rather than saying the athletic department has failed, maybe the conference as a whole has come down to Irvine's level. The committed schools moved on to the WAC and the complacent schools stuck around, filling the void with transient D2 programs looking to move up.
Again, this is an athletic department failure.
At during that time period, 82-92 the BW only got at large bids in (Of course UNLV is the other BW school, I just assumed they got the auto bid)
83 USU
84 Fresno
88 USU
90 SB and New Mexico St
91, New Mexico St.
