The Mountain West Conference was formed this hot summer day in 1999. The original 8 had enough of the 16 team WAC and wanted to cut a better TV deal, cut travel back and not share with their WAC brothers. So the following schools were left by the curb in a WAC trash heap: TCU, SMU, Rice, Fresno St, San Jose St, Tulsa, UTEP, and Hawaii. Of course three of those schools have joined the MWC now and BYU and Utah are gone.
By definition the name MOUNTAIN WEST is not exactly right. While Idaho, Wyoming, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada and Utah are considered Mountain States. California and Hawaii are considered Pacific States. Some people consider Nevada to be part of the Southwest. But, that would only confuse matters even worse. Whatever they call it; fans of those schools now call it home.
Happy 14th Anniversary.
Speaking of anniversaries, KTIK will have been on the air for 19 years in July as well.
I would say celebrate but that has been tried and failed miserably.
KTIK was born one day in July, 1994. We too went through some identity crisis as well. KTIK was KANR. ANR stood for All News Radio, we carried the now defunct CNN Headline News feed. KTIK stood for nothing really other than a way to shorten the word Ticket. The ticket was popular in Dallas and other places so we went with it. Good thing, cause I almost was convinced to go with KSPN. It wasn’t available anyway and I didn’t want to hitch my wagon to a network feed and felt we stood for more than just that. I may have gone with KISN, Idaho Sports Network, but that was taken as well. The Ticket and ALL SPORTS radio has been very good to AM 1340, AM 1350 and now 93.1 FM. Tony Kornheiser, Doc Walker, Steve Szaban, Kiley and the Coach, WTEM, Jim Rome, Don Imus, One on One Sports, the Fabulous Sports Babe and Ferrall on the bench were all part of the early years of KTIK. As was Idaho Sports Talk, the Sports and Business Report, The Sports Buffet, Greg Patton, Bobby Dye, the late Ransom “Coach” Smith and Mal Fichman. And yes, nobody is older than Idaho Sports Talk. We started in January, 1985.
We don’t celebrate that either.
Oh, well.
At least it is THIS about THAT.
