New(ish) Conference Rivals

The news has been out for several weeks now, so this is more a reactionary post. Rumors were that a couple of other schools would be following the lone announcement, but since the October 10th news only the Little Rock Trojans are officially set to become the ninth member of the soon-to-be United Athletic Conference. I won't wait any longer and truth be told, the Trojans are worthy of their own entry.

This will only be a post to offer my perspective and some points. The first being, I wonder if there should be concern that rumors were swirling of three schools, but only one has made the commitment. Either way, I've alluded to this before, but I'm happy to share the conference distribution with fewer schools.

Second, it was very good to see a conference that the UT Arlington Athletic Department is a part of expand with a member school that is an existing member of Division I. For the Western Athletic Conference in its current geographic footprint to expand, the infill likely would have been Division II schools transitioning to DI. California Baptist, Grand Canyon, Tarleton State and Utah Tech all followed that pattern. While there have been some successes at these schools to varying degrees, I want all schools to have their sports programs compete now and who have a history of competing.

Conversation with an AD Part One - the UAC Rebrand

While I don't want the purpose of this blog to vary from its core, opinions and commentary on various aspects of the UT Arlington Mavericks Athletic Department, I have been contemplating in recent years how to do a little more, take it to the next level if you will. I attempted what follows last year, but obviously it didn't work, likely due to user error. I took a different approach, shook a few more hands and viola. 

On Friday afternoon, I had the genuine pleasure of a sit-down question and answer session "on the record" with the Athletic Director at UT Arlington, Jon Fagg. While I intended to make the interview a singular blog post, he allowed me to keep going. My thought process was if he offered 30 minutes, I was going to take 31. However, he let me go for over an hour and a half. As such, I really have to break it down into multiple parts. 

While I picked his brain about quite a bit of items, the drive home was filled with internal questions about things I should have followed up on more than I did, it was only natural. I did hit a lot of main points though. There is quite a bit of information in the conversation.

With that said, the Maverick Rambler presents its one-on-one with the AD.

UAC Find

Any time a university changes its conference affiliation, it creates headlines and is a hot topic. It creates conversations on a national scale where people who wouldn't mention a school are now discussing the changes. Some even try to present themselves as experts, though they knew little about the situation or school prior.

UTA, along with the remaining members of the Western Athletic Conference, certainly qualify as they and the members of the Atlantic Sun reorganized 15 schools into two conferences. The members of the two entities rarely garner much national attention so to hear all of these "experts" know the ins and outs of Tarleton State and Bellarmine make me chuckle.

However, I did find the following video on the WAC message board from the Big Mountain Podcast on the WAC being re-branded to the United Athletic Conference and the reorg with thew ASun. The Big Mountain guys tend to focus on all conferences in the western end of the U.S. and have more knowledge than the average folks.

A New Coat of Paint

There was big news from both a UT Arlington perspective and conference affiliation shuffling that came out this week. As has been the case for its entire history, the Western Athletic Conference will survive, despite the handwringing from the media and social media circles.

What was known prior to this week was Seattle University and Grand Canyon were out of the conference at the end of this month. Common belief among the remaining WAC members was good riddance to the second. That left seven schools, Abilene Christian, California Baptist, Southern Utah, Tarleton State, Utah Tech, Utah Valley along with UTA, for the upcoming athletic year. Seven is the minimum for an automatic berth into the men's basketball tournament.

California Baptist accepted an invitation from the Big West Conference several months ago and Utah Valley formally did the same last month. That would leave only five members for the 2026/27 athletic year. With limited options in the footprint, schools bailing for competitively weaker conferences and no Division II schools ready to move, people were predicting the WAC's demise.

Realignment Rumors

At the beginning of the month, I opined on the current state of the UT Arlington Athletic Department's place in the current landscape of college athletics, specifically in regard to their lack of a football program limiting the potential conference landing spots should the Western Athletic Conference lose one more member.

In it, I mentioned the few, limited possibilities as California Baptist is likely a prime target for the West Coast Conference and Tarleton State's Football Bowl Subdivision aspirations will likely lead to a Conference USA spot at a minimum. With few to no institutions willing to join, the WAC is in a rough spot. 

UTA potential could have a home in the Ohio Valley Conference, joining fellow Sun Belt Conference cast-off Little Rock. The Missouri Valley Conference and UTA briefly flirted before nothing formal advanced prior to UTA joining the WAC. The Atlantic Sun Conference likely would be receptive too, but I know of nothing actually occurring between the two. 

If Not Now?

If you have a high-level whiplash injury or extreme fatigue from the constant conference reshuffling dubbed conference realignment, you are not alone. I miss the days were college sports were about competition and money wasn't so prominent. Unless it directly touches the UT Arlington Mavericks, I tend to avoid it here on the Maverick Rambler. 

With that setup, guess what is around the corner?

Recently, the remaining two schools of the old Pac-12 (Pac-2?) invited and received acceptance from Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State and Utah State. Coupled with Oregon State and Washington State, that gave the Pac-2 seven schools (Pac-7?). The five schools departed the Mountain West, who also were left with seven members. Since the NCAA requires eight full-time members in a conference to play at the Football Bowl Subdivision, obviously, each conference needs at least one more FBS school. Meaning more moves are on the horizon.

So what does this all mean for the Maverick Rambler?

SFA is Out

Stephen F. Austin State University announced a couple of weeks ago that they intended to depart the Western Athletic Conference and rejoin the Southland Conference, effective in one month. That ended weeks of speculation regarding their intentions to move.

SFA officials trumped up the move, of course. Citing benefits that were generally esoteric in nature, save for the student athletes (an increasingly archaic term) decreasing their time out of the classroom with reduced travel time, a cost savings and ability for fans to see the team on the road. 

For the WAC, it does several things and I'll give my take on both entities.

Don't let the Door Hit Ya

Big news broke out of the constant reshuffling of the conference realignment game this week. Just a couple weeks after my previous post about the problems Grand Canyon University brings to the Western Athletic Conference, they, along with Seattle University, accepted an invitations to the West Coast Conference, made notable by Gonzaga's domination the last couple of decades. There's a lot to unpack here and with everything else in conference realignment, the end result depends on other factors outside the WAC's and UT Arlington's control.

My first reaction was ecstatic, but it left me a little confused. I'm a firm believer that GCU is a cancer within the conference. As I detailed in the last post, their funding model cannot be replicated and they shovel a lot of money to athletics from online degrees. They outspend everyone overall but California Baptist in the WAC. Similar to an inflation adjuster, CBU spends more just by being in California and would spend dollar for dollar less than GCU were they in Arizona, or get more bang for their buck if spending was the same. However, in men's basketball, GCU almost doubles second-place CBU and is nearly 500 percent higher than last place MBB budget. 

Now I've taken flack on social media because I'm told the real reason I dislike GCU is because UTA just can't compete. The reality is that their funding mechanism creates a competitive unbalance where UTA's only shot is to win is via an upset (made even harder by the perceived officiating issues). I said it last post and I'll say it again, I don't believe GCU was the better team last year. When UTA couldn't get past Georgia State while in the Sun Belt Conference, I never despised the Panthers like I do GCU.

 But that's all the WCC's issue after next athletic year, even if I don't understand why they were selected over CBU. 

Stuck on the Side of the Road

 When the middle of the UT Arlington athletic season is underway, I try to avoid posting about irrelevant news stories. Instead, I try to save them for summer. It's not a hard-set rule I establish for this blog but one I generally try to follow. Occasionally there are exceptions and this will be one of those.

A recent news report has released that Chicago State is actively exploring the idea of starting an FCS football team. If this is true, every .... reason or excuse, depending upon your own viewpoint, that UTA officials have given for not looking into starting a team are absolutely flimsy. Let me explain why.

First, for those who aren't familiar with Chicago State, and I'd imagine there are quite a few, they are probably the University in Division I with the most challenges. Their enrollment is 3,000 overall and headed in the wrong direction. Their athletic budget is near the smallest in DI. Their revenue sources are severely limited. No conference wants the school, and they are independent without a conference home, save for a few affiliations like men's soccer. Few schools want to play them at their place. As such, attendance is dismal. Some of their facilities are nice, but others are lacking, or non-existent. Their student body is composed of commuter students. They've been Division I since the mid-1980's and have zero tournament appearances in any team sport. Only the track team had any success in the late 1980's.

If this University can begin the process to start a football program, anyone can.

Summer Chats: Conference Realignment Thoughts

 I haven't addressed wide-scale NCAA conference realignment on The Maverick Rambler, with the exception of how the UT Arlington Athletics Department fits within that framework. I will break that today.

Conference realignment has always been a thing, even if it wasn't called that. Look at the constant shuffling of the Southland Conference from its founding until UTA left in the 2012. The Mavericks had 18 different SLC rivals, but never had more than 11 members at any one time. The pace has accelerated the last two decades, starting with the Atlantic Coast Conference's raid of the Big East. Ever since then there has been a constant rollercoaster of universities trying to better themselves.

Rivalries have been postponed and/or destroyed while teams with no geographic compatibility have replaced the more natural and/or heated ones. Teams are chasing the dollar to increase their competitiveness while negating the fan base. Baylor stopped playing TCU and SMU to replace with Kansas and Iowa State. Until of course TCU was admitted back, along with West Virginia. Guess which game tends to draw more fans, regardless of sport? Now obviously Kansas is a draw in basketball, but now so much in anything else. West Virginia had no natural rivals until Cincinatti was admitted this year. Iowa State's biggest games were out of conference.

But it didn't hit clown world until a year ago.

Are the Feet Dragging

It has been three months since UT Arlington students voted in favor of football returning to campus by nearly 62 percent. Obviously, there's not going to be much movement in three months, but news has been scant to come out about the topic. 

I've spoken to a few people about the latest and unsurprisingly, the University is either taking a deliberate approach, or dragging its feet. I'm generally an optimist and want to believe the U is giving a good faith effort.

UTA President Jennifer Cowley was on record with the following quote:

Title IX requires that there be a sufficient number of women's sports seats, so the very first thing we need to do is to ask what it takes to expand our women's sports. So I've asked the Athletics director to evaluate some women's sports and come forward with recommendations around what we might do there.

What she is referencing is Title IX, the landmark legislation passed in the 1970's that dictate funding based on equality of both genders. Most people mistakenly believe Title IX requires a one for one scholarship for both women and men. It is actually a three-prong test where just one prong needs to be met.

Rivalry Continues

The UT Arlington Athletic Department recently announced a key date on the men's basketball schedule. On top of that, it looks like they are trying to elevate the match-up.

On December 10, 2022 UTA will renew the now-non-conference rivalry with the Texas State Bobcats. Additionally, it will be played off-campus at Dickie's Arena in the Fort Worth Cultural District.

I was certainly excited to see the game on the schedule. I was afraid it would turn into a casualty of conference realignment. UTA was fortunate to have both the Bobcats and Texas-San Antonio Roadrunners move to the Western Athletic Conference together, giving the Mavericks some familiar faces in a new conference. When UTA moved to the Sun Belt, Texas State did too, maintaining what was UTA's then-longest current conference rival. It was theirs a well.

But, when UTA was forced out of the Sun Belt, the longest-continuous rivalry meter was reset to zero. However, UTA does renew some conference rivalries of various degrees, but nothing continuous. 

Consider what the Texas State rivalry had climbed to in men's basketball:

Over Before it Started

 Earlier this week, Incarnate Word University (or rather the Southland Conference) announced the Cardinals would stay in the SLC, less than two weeks before they were supposed to join the Western Athletic Conference. 

While many folks are proclaiming this the doom and gloom of the WAC, I think this is great for the conference. The main thing this affects is the football numbers.

As it is, New Mexico State is a football independent at the Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A), while the WAC resumed football sponsorship at the Football Championship Subdivision (I-AA). The Aggies are leaving at the end of the year to go to Conference USA with Sam Houston State. Tarleton State University and Utah Tech University are transitioning from Division II and not eligible for postseason play. As such, their numbers do not count towards the minimum needed for an automatic berth for the conference into the postseason. Lamar made the odd decision to go back to the Southland, which is a terrible conference for all things non-football. California Baptist, Grand Canyon, Seattle U, Utah Valley along with UTA do not sponsor the sport. That leaves Abilene Christian, Southern Utah and Stephen F. Austin as full, postseason eligible members. Once, the DII transition is complete and once UT-Rio Grande Valley starts their program, the WAC will be at the bare minimum. 

That was what Incarnate Word brought to the table. A warm body.

New AD Named

The wait is finally over. On June 13, 2022, UT Arlington named Jon Fagg as the seventh Athletic Director in the 65-year history of the Athletic Department as a four-year University. Jim Baker announced his retirement in February, effective September 1. Fagg will start his tenure on August 1.

Fagg comes to UTA from University of Arkansas, where he's been since 2008. He was most recently a deputy athletic director. Prior to that, he served stints at North Carolina State, Fresno State and the Big South Conference. 

Looking over the list of prior job duties, I see much of the same stuff that you'd expect: "direct oversight of the NCAA compliance program," "academic support," and "student-athlete experience." He also was directly involved in their two major revenue sports in football and men's basketball. 

However, one thing does stick out to me.

Return of the WAC

Like Mark Morrison sang (using a small play on words), the Sun Belt is breaking up with the UT Arlington Athletic Department, prompting UTA to rejoin a familiar conference, which contains some familiar faces. 

How'd we get here? Plain and simple. UTA lacks a football program. This move was not initiated by UTA, but rather by discontent within the Sun Belt Conference. As the Sun Belt changed leadership and direction, they elected to focus their strategy on growing revenue through football. 

Of course, that's the one thing, the one, that UTA in its current form could not help with in accomplishing.

Sun Belt looking to 12 again?

Shortly after UT-Arlington joined the Sun Belt Conference (in the world of realignment, it seems so long ago), they were able to make some moves to get to twelve playing schools after losing some members to other conferences. Early in 2013, Georgia Southern and Appalachian State finally got the invite they craved to leave their long time homes in the Southern Conference to go to the SBC. To cover UTA and UALR in the football side, NMSU and Idaho football programs, left without a home after the WAC imploded (remember that one Maverick fans), were given a life raft by the SBC and all of a sudden, the Sun Belt had 12 all-sports and 12 football schools. Then Western Kentucky was offered an invite to Conference USA (I'll leave out my thoughts on that one) and the grand 12/12 with even divisions went with out the door with WKU.

Since that time rumors have floated that the SBC was going to add certain schools, with the list including, but not limited to, Liberty, James Madison, Missouri State, Eastern Kentucky, New Mexico State and Lamar. Nothing was ever concrete, and I never heard anything from an official source, either in person or in media productions.

Well, at least until now.

UTA Basketball in the Postseason

In the vein of This Day in UTA Football History, I want to point to a very significant day in UTA basketball history. While I won't make the UTA Basketball version a regular occurrence like I did for the football version, there are many games, the sport is still played, the history is easier to find, etc., I think I like the idea of spotlighting milestone or significant events.

The 1981 season was one of the best years for UTA basketball, especially up to that point. Since joining the four-year ranks in 1959, UTA basketball had just three winning seasons in its history. They were 14-12 in 1966-67 and 1971-72 and 14-13 in 1979-80. When a 13-13 mark in 1972-73 is also considered successful, you know a sport program is moribund.

In my opinion, the 1980-81 team, from a pure talent perspective, is still the best team that UTA has produced. I say that over the 2008 NCAA tournament team as well as the 2012 SLC champ and NIT team.

The Southland at that time was one of the better non-power conferences in the country. As a whole, the conference was 8-9 in the NCAA tournament with two sweet sixteen appearances from the 1979 tournament to the 1987 from four different teams. That time frame is specific since the conference changed drastically. UTA dropped football, forcing the men's teams out of the conference for a year as the membership rules required teams to sponsor the sport. That led a domino effect of Lamar, Louisiana Tech and Arkansas State exiting the conference and lower tier teams replacing them, especially in basketball. The first two teams combined for all eight of the NCAA tourney wins. The SLC wouldn't win an NCAA tourney game again until Northwestern State won a play-in game in 2001.

An Open Letter to the Men's Basketball Team.

To the players, coaches and those who help the outcome on the court,

For better or worse, you are the spotlight of the Athletic Department. The perception of the entire Department, and to a lesser extent the University as a whole, lays on your performance. It may not be fair and it certainly isn't right, but it is what it is.

For years, the University just let the Athletic Department get by with no real active involvement. This is evident from the time the UTA Rebels joined the highest ranks of the NCAA until a few years ago. There was a long stretch of time where UTA was one of the worst performing teams in the Southland Conference from top to bottom with some of the most sub-par venues in the SLC.

But all that has changed. The University is actively involved now and has made Athletics a higher priority. Of course, College Park Center is one of the most visible signs. Going from Texas Hall, which never really was an athletic arena, to one of the finest basketball and volleyball places to play in all of the NCAA and would make many Big 12 teams jealous is the most obvious example, but nearly every sport is receiving some form of facility upgrade. Allan Saxe Field is almost an entirely new softball stadium. Clay Gould has received several upgrades of the last few years. Even Maverick Stadium has seen some improvements. With the baseball and softball teams now in their own locker rooms and the plans for doing so been in the works for years, the six track teams have better facilities at their disposal to train and practice. 11 of UTA's 14 teams has seen some facility upgrades in the last few years. That was unheard of when I was a student at the turn of the century.

But it doesn't end there. The admin was active in upgrading UTA's conference. The Mavericks went from a FCS/1-AA-football-centric conference with decent baseball and softball competition and bottom-level everything else to the nationally-known Western Athletic Conference. When the WAC had to exercise their nuclear option, the admin was active in securing membership into the Sun Belt Conference. While not as nationally-recognized, it was unmistakeably a step up from Southland and the now-WAC competition.

The budget is about double from when I was a student just a decade ago too. More money doesn't guarantee success, but it sure makes getting there a bit easier. The cynicist would say that is a byproduct of UTA's growth and the student fee, but the fact remains the Athletic Department is spending far more money now than at the rate of inflation.

The other big difference is the admin support. I try to make one of every sport played on campus a year, and in the higher-profile sports it is multiple. I have yet to attend any sporting event that President Vistasp Karbhari wasn't there, minus one baseball game. I can't recall one game of any kind where President Witt, President of UTA at the time I attended UTA, was in attendance. Though I concede I didn't really care then about presidential attendance and may have missed it.

All of this is a long way for me to say the U cares about your performance and is giving you the resources you need to compete. The downside is that expectations are there for a team to compete. One of the things I love about the UTA fan base is the incredible realism that we have. We know what to expect and don't have delusions of granduer. Keep that in mind as I go forward.

I know you guys as a whole are quite a young team. You are talented, but young. However you have shown an ability to compete, no matter the opponent. Problem is it ranges from the ranked team in the top 25, to an RPI-300 team. How can UTA claim wins over the top two teams in the conference, but have been swept by the last place team? It is very defeating seeing a team that should be a Sun Belt leader fighting for fourth place with little chance for third. Beat the teams that aren't even above .500 in conference play and you are at the top of the conference.

As a fan, most of us would like to see some consistency that has been missing the last few years. I'd rather be consistently middle of the pack and beat who we are supposed to, rather than do well against the top and poorly versus the bottom. As a fan, this yo-yo action and inconsistency on the court is tough to take. I'm a die-hard and will support regardless. The fairweather fans may be lost forever because of it. That hurts every athletic team in the process.

All UTA fans ask is a Maverick team playing at an even level night in and out. We are okay with losing to a better team. We get frustrated when the last place team in the conference sweeps you. We get frustrated when we have more wins over the top two teams than the bottom two.

So please, help build the fan base and don't play to the level of your opponent. Please don't look past anybody on the floor. Please take it one game at a time and do what you have to against those that you should do it too. Don't take any team for granted.

Beating ULM, Georgia Southern and Louisiana-Lafayette is a great accomplishment. Losing to Troy and South Alabama tarnishes that. You, the University and us fans deserve better.

Another Conference Realignment Downside

I started this blog after the dust settled on the latest round of conference realignment. While there are still moves to be completed, for example Western Kentucky to Conference USA, those were announced a while ago and nothing major looks to be on the Horizon, at least until Division IV and player stipends works itself out.

UTA is entering the second year in a row of being in a new conference. I could find many of the common complaints about the loss of rivalry, tradition, search for greener pastures and, in the case of the Mavericks, loss of geographic compactness that many others have made.

It is that second point that I write about now. After playing in the WAC, which occupied (and still does) three time zones, we now play in the Sun Belt, where four teams play in an opposite time zone. There was a point this year when UTA played in the Black and Gold Challenge in Boone, North Carolina that UTAMAVS.com had the wrong time.

Today, the ladies play at Georgia State. I was double checking UTA's site with the Sun Belt. UTAMAVS.com said six. The SBC's site said 5 Eastern, which would be four here. The UTA media guide said six and the Panthers site said six Eastern, which is five o'clock local.

This happened last year with six teams in two different time zones. However, this never happened in the Southland, where all teams were (and still are) in the Central Time Zone.

I am not saying we should go back. I like where we are and most of the teams were have joined. But it doesn't make it any less frustrating.