Utah, BYU Retain Attorney to Improve Television Visibility
Not sure what this means, but I'm hoping it improves the conference and its TV deal, because what they have currently is ridiculously bad. In fact, I'm tired of the Mountain West Conference and wish Utah could bolt it. Hell even the WAC is looking better today than the current structure.
What we do have is a TV deal that gets little play outside of the states that have conference teams and that's never good. When you're not a BCS program, it's imperative that you get as much national exposure as possible, or you flop. I'm willing to bet if this current TV deal had been in place in 2004, Utah would not have made the Fiesta Bowl. It's an ugly truth and until the conference realizes this, the programs that make up the Mountain West will continue to slip into irrelavancy.
What's worse is that this current situation could impede future scheduling. Do you think teams like UCLA and Louisville want to play on CSTV or Versus? Well that's exactly what happens when these bigger programs come to Salt Lake City and play the Utes. The Utah, UCLA game is scheduled for Versus this year, how many people actually get that channel?
Of course it stings even more when you realize the Mountain West gave up rights to ESPN broadcasts for this. Yeah the ESPN games were not always ideal, but at least we were on national TV. Now we're stuck playing on a public access channel that all of two people get. I think the lead in is Wayne's World. If the Mountain West does not get its act together, and I have my doubts they ever will, I think the Utes need to seriously look at leaving the conference. Do anything possible to get out of the Mountain West, even if it means forming a new conference. Because what we have right now is killing Utah athletics.