No TV for Fresno State game proves point

Tonight’s season opener between ranked BYU and Fresno State in a sold-out Marriott Center is prime evidence of why BYU president Cecil O. Samuelson decided to take the Cougar athlete program on a path of independence beginning in 2011.

This is a marvelous opener for both programs with multiple storylines. You have a ranked BYU basketball team that features an All-American on at least a dozen honor lists. You have Fresno State, finally off NCAA sanctions, featuring Steve Cleveland, a former BYU head coach returning to a school he helped get back on track back in 1996 — a homecoming of sorts.

And what does the league’s TV network decide to air this Friday night?

The mtn will show the San Diego State — UCLA women’s basketball game instead. It was a choice made by the programming arm of the mtn.

BYU has the capability of broadcasting the game on KBYU-TV or BYU-TV, the latter with a potential audience of more than 120 million homes. BYU filed a request to to the game on BYU-TV and the league’s TV partners (Comcast) said no, but for a fee, they would allow it to be aired on KBYU-TV, which reaches a small market in the Utah/Idaho area. Presumably, this would have little impact on the league’s audience watching the women’s game.

BYU decided it wouldn’t be worth doing the game unless it was on BYU-TV to a nationwide audience.

Still, the question remains, who’d get the bigger draw for the league TV audience, the women’s game or BYU versus Fresno State. Remember, the Bulldogs are going to be in the MWC in 2012.

Go figure.