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Summarized by Kent Larsen
BYU Men's Basketball May Play on Monday Evenings
CNNSI 10Feb00 S3
By Phil Miller, Special to CNNSI.com
PROVO, UTAH -- None of the teams in the new Mountain West Conference
likes the conference's current schedule. But the proposal for next
year's schedule may solve most problems -- and get the league more TV
time as well. But under the schedule, BYU would have to break its
tradition and play on Monday evenings -- and BYU Coach Steve
Cleveland is open to the idea.
Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson drew up the proposal, which
includes games only on Saturdays and on Monday evenings. "It works
really well. It addresses all the gaps we have in this year's
schedule, and makes things more symmetrical." The Monday games serve
the conference's seven-year contract which requires that the
conference have late-night Monday games.
BYU would have big adjustments to make because of the new schedule,
however. Since its athletes don't practice on Sundays, the team would
have less time to prepare for Monday games than its competitors, and
then there's Family Home Evening, traditionally respected by the
school.
But Coach Cleveland says the proposal has some very positive aspects.
"We'd like to be involved in a few of those" Big Monday games, he
said. "Not practicing on Sundays wouldn't be ideal, but maybe we
could cope, if that's what the league decides." And it would also be
better than this year's schedule.
Surprisingly, the coach most opposed to the proposal is Utah's Rick
Majerus. He says that Monday games interrupt the one day off that
student athletes get, Sundays. "That speaks to this conference not
having a genuine regard for academics," Majerus said. "If you play on
Monday, we would practice on Sunday. An athlete is never afforded a
day when he can sit back and maybe go to a movie or get his laundry
done or do schoolwork or just be a normal student." Of course,
Majerus has a lot of LDS players who may object to practicing on
Sundays anyway.
Adoption of the schedule is anything but certain. In fact, a similar
proposal was voted down last summer.
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