Is Denver too excited about joining the WAC?

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Last Thursday, the University of Denver threw a press conference, and a party broke out.

DU’s announcement that 10 of its 17 teams, including its basketball programs, were joining the Western Athletic Conference in 2012-13, was a lot more than just some suits standing at a podium, taking questions. I was on the fence about whether to attend until basketball SID Mike Kennedy told me there would be “pageantry.” He wasn’t kidding.

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The cheerleaders were there, as was the band. So were the coaches of all 10 affected teams, and all available athletes. There were balloons. There was free swag. There were WAC banners and signs everywhere. And there was Karl Benson, the WAC commissioner, who didn’t attend the announcements at Texas-San Antonio and Texas State — an unfortunate consequence of his inability to be three places at once — but did attend DU’s wet, sloppy kiss to his otherwise much-maligned conference, now attempting to stagger back to life after its near-death experience in August.

“The Western Athletic Conference is an iconic athletics conference associated with the West,” said DU Chancellor Robert Coombe. “We are absolutely thrilled — absolutely thrilled — to become a member of the Western Athletic Conference.”

“This is a day of celebration,” said DU’s athletic director*, Peg Bradley‐Doppes. “There were some happy tears with our alums coming in. This is a day that we all envisioned. We didn’t know when it would happen, but we had the dream. The dream is now a reality.” She said joining the WAC was the culmination of a five-year “strategic plan specifically for today, for this purpose, to get into a new conference.”

The event — which you can watch here — left no doubt that Denver was overjoyed to earn a spot in the WAC, leaving behind the geographically awkward Sun Belt in favor of a more regionally appropriate, higher-profile conference. But the question must be asked: is DU’s joy out of proportion to the actual benefit of its move, at least in basketball terms?

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