It's a great time to be a BYU fan. The football team just completed its second undefeated conference season, finishing each year 11-2, including wins in the Vegas Bowl and over the University of Utah - not to mention ending the seasons ranked No. 15 and 14 respectively.

With only one conference loss this year, the men's basketball team is bringing that same expectation of winning to the hardwood. At 8-1 in conference, the Cougars are setting themselves up as the likely repeat conference champions and once again thrusting the Cougars into national recognition - if only the country, not to mention BYU fans in Utah, could see their games.

The men's basketball team won its seventh straight conference game Wednesday night against the league's last place Colorado State Rams. The only problem was that it wasn't on TV. Lately it seems that not airing games seems to be more the rule than the exception. By the end of this season, 11 of BYU's games will not have been broadcast and five will have been broadcast on BYUTV because the mtn., Versus and CSTV chose not to air them, including one game against No. 6 Louisville.

Nearly two years ago, the MWC announced the mtn. network as the conference's own ESPN, a place where fans could not only see all of BYU's games, but the games played by its conference foes. Two years later, the deal has been anything but that, currently reaching only 1.2 million homes. To put this dismal number in perspective, that is 44 million homes fewer than BYUTV and 93 million fewer than ESPN reach. So even when the games are broadcast, chances are your provider doesn't carry it.

To make matters worse, MWC fans found out this fall that the conference had the chance to sign a contract to put the mtn. on Dish in seven Western states, but instead chose to hold out for a national deal. So far, this gamble has not paid off and has proven to be little more than wishful thinking.

We know the MWC is in a tough situation. It signed a bad contract that locked its teams into minimal media coverage and little hopes of national recognition. Last summer, BYU and the University of Utah began looking for more feasible ways out of the bad deal when they hired a lawyer to analyze the TV deal and look for potential agreement ending loopholes. So far the lawyer hasn't found anything that's been made public.

While not being able to see BYU sports has fans up in arms, not knowing what the conference is doing to remediate the situation makes it worse. Every time the media asks the conference about the network's problems, the MWC reinforces the assertion that the mtn. is one of the best networks on television.

The major problems with this TV deal is not only that fans have been left in the dark when it comes to watching BYU sports; they have also been left in the dark in regards to what is going on with negotiations, whether it be about progress made by the universities' lawyer or the mtn.'s progress in moving to bigger markets. Without public updates, fans naturally assume, whether justified or not, nothing is being done - especially when the mtn. begins airing ads asking viewers to call Direct TV, asking them to carry the mtn. What message are fans supposed to understand from such media campaigns other than, "Hey, we haven't been able to get anything moving, maybe you could help." While Direct TV has reported a large influx in calls complaining about the mtn. each time these campaigns have launched, nothing has been done.

Two years into the MWC's TV deal, it is proving to be everything but that which was promised and the fans are angry. At this point, fans aren't likely to be pleased with anything short of the mtn. being carried on Dish, Direct TV or Comcast's national cable package. In the meantime, however, we'd like to know what progress is being made.

Copyright Brigham Young University 14 Feb 2008