In the spirit of the signs spawned by ESPN's "Football Lives Here" ad campaign, here's a sign for the MWC "leadership": "Ineptitude Lives Here".

While going through the MWC men's basketball schedule at http://themwc.cstv.com/sports/m-baskbl/mwc-m-baskbl-sched.html, I found some very interesting and disappointing information.

Although picked by the media in the pre-season to finish at the top of the league, BYU was placed at the bottom by the league's (mis)management. Of the 9 league teams, only Air Force (14 games) has seen less exposure than BYU (16 games) on the MWC's 3 affiliated networks. I find that very interesting for a team that is one of MWC's marquee team-if not the marquee team. The amount of regular season TV appearances (including conference and non-conference games) on either the mtn., CSTV, or vs. is as follows:

AFA-14
BYU-16
CSU-16
TCU-17
UTAH-17
SDSU-18
WYO-18
UNM-20
UNLV-21

Again, I find this very intriguing and indicative of the level of competence at the MWC offices-not that we needed any more such indications.

And it gets a whole lot worse for Craig Thompson and Co. when one looks at the in-conference schedule. Of the 9 games that the MWC chose not to air, BYU (4 missed games), again, was the 2nd-most slighted team, behind only AFA (5). Here are the teams and the number of games that went untelevized:

AFA-5
BYU-4
TCU-3
CSU-2
UTAH-2
UNM-1
UNLV-1
SDSU-0
WYO-0

Of the 18 potential team-slots for the missed games, 9 were filled by AFA and BYU. What is even more unforgivable is that both BYU-AFA games were not televized AND WERE SATURDAY GAMES! That is beyond unnacceptable for a conference who has its own network. Even without CSTV and vs., the conference could EASILY fit four games into Saturday programming and still have gads of time available for their low-value original programming.

Things had better change, or BYU fans, mild-mannered as they normally are, may come up with a sign (or gesture) that is more direct and more stinging than "Ineptitude Lives Here". Perhaps Joe Glenn could help us out with that.

Go Cougars! Beat AFA! Beat the MWC!

what's really sad is that the mtn is not even available in san diego or laramie right now ( I think) and they had all their games televised. Guess they weren't thinking about ratings . . .

Hengst wrote:

what's really sad is that the mtn is not even available in san diego or laramie right now ( I think) and they had all their games televised. Guess they weren't thinking about ratings . . .

And of all 13 of TCU's conference games, 11 were on the mtn. despite the fact that Ft. Worth doesn't have the mtn.

Very interesting information, BYUtx. And, sadly, I'm not surprised at all. You should pass that on to the mtn. management; not that I think it will change anything, but just to see what lame excuse they give you, especially after this from Mars' older thread:

Subject: RE: Games?
Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008
From: Mtn Feedback
To: Mr. Teeples

Dear Mr. Teeples:
The schools have asked us to broadcast an even number of games of each of the institutions at least in the ballpark. So we can't schedule 17 BYU games and 5 Wyoming [But I guess they can schedule 21 for UNLV and 14 for AFA]. That keys into our decisions when we are choosing our schedule. No one asked to broadcast that particular game or we could have considered releasing the rights.

Regards-
The Mtn.

I guess it depends on what your definition of "ballpark" is.

this just proves all kinds of commissionars, tv affilates, and anyone else that was part of programming is all going straight to hell...where no viewers are forced to watch a bad network

Good work BYUtx. Sounds like it's time for a BYU faithful letter campaign complaining about the uneven treatment of the #1 team in the conference being treated like its the worst team in the conference.