Some current conference alignments seem absurd

Stories out of last week's NCAA convention talked about how increased travel costs are putting a serious crimp in the NCAA's budget as well as universities and colleges around the country.

A panel came up with several ideas, including athletes consolidating and sharing bags to avoid increased baggage costs, using buses instead of commercial air travel and traveling in smaller groups.

I've got one. How about going back to the novel idea of playing in conferences against your neighbors, rather than schools a thousand miles or more away?

That how it used to be when conferences were formed on the basis of regional rivalries rather than TV contracts and other money considerations.

Once the Atlantic Coast Conference centered around four North Carolina colleges and four schools from neighboring states. Now it is a 12-school conglomerate stretching 1,300 miles from Boston to Miami.

We've got Utah State making a 1,500-mile trek to Ruston, La., for games every year, not to mention the 3,000-mile trip to Honolulu. How about when those two WAC "rivals" Louisiana Tech and Hawaii travel to play each other? That's a 4,034-mile trip for each.

Then there's Utah and BYU, whose various athletic teams travel over a thousand miles several times a year for games in Fort Worth, Texas.

The most absurd league of all has to be the one that Utah Valley joined last summer. The Wolverines joined with all the schools without a conference and will play in the Great West Conference with the likes of North Dakota, the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Houston Baptist and Cal Poly. Get out a map and connect the dots of these four colleges and you'll discover a football-shaped area covering the majority of the country. They should call it Great America.

There's also the idea of familiarity with your fellow league members.

Why should New Mexico (MWC), New Mexico State (WAC) and UTEP (C-USA) compete in three different conferences? Why are TCU and SMU, two long-time rivals in adjoining cities, in different leagues? It's become crazy since the days when schools from neighboring cities and states played in the same league.

So what are some solutions?

Around here, we could start by making the Mountain West Conference a true Mountain West conference. Kick out TCU and San Diego State and add Utah State and Boise State. If you want to make it an even more compact eight-team league, let's get rid of New Mexico.