For years, Boise State University President Bob Kustra has called adding a varsity baseball team to the school's athletic department his "pet project." But other than a possessing a personal passion for baseball, the justification Kustra has offered as to why it was imperative for BSU to cut its wrestling program has been based on statements of dubious veracity or outright lies.

The financial details provided by the Boise State administration regarding the decision have been sketchy at best. But thanks to investigations by FloWrestling and other outlets, we now know that adding a baseball team, even after cutting wrestling, is not only unjustifiable from a financial perspective but also potentially disastrous for the university.

The assumption that a new baseball team in the Mountain West Conference will raise the awareness of the Broncos brand to a level that can justify the enormous investment it will take to start a team, let a lone be competitive, has been thoroughly debunked.

That leaves only a few comments made by Kustra as to why Boise State requires a baseball team so urgently that a successful and vital program such as wrestling should be cut to make room.

One supposed issue Kustra brought up was the most recent affiliate agreement with the Pac-12, the conference in which Broncos grapplers have been competing since 1988.

Kustra stated in an interview with the Idaho Statesman on April 20 [emphasis added], "We've had this relationship with the Pac-12 for a few years now [and] it was always a multi-year agreement. This last year, for the first time, they gave us a one-year contract. The relationship between the Pac-12 in wrestling and Boise State became year-to-year, and that makes long-term planning very difficult."

Through a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request, we have obtained the affiliate agreement between Boise State and the Pac-12 conference for wrestling dated June 9, 2014. It is a one-year agreement that includes a termination clause that either party can execute (see below).



Either Kustra was unaware of when this agreement went into effect, or it would he appear that he deliberately misled the public. The full agreement can be found at the end of this article.

A request sent by FloWrestling to the Boise State athletic department to comment, clarify or correct Kustra's statement went unanswered.

Additional rationale offered by Kustra has been based on the vague notion of "conference alignment." Boise State has been a full-time member of the Mountain West Conference (MWC) since 2011. The MWC sponsors baseball but not wrestling.

But it is also true that only seven of the 11 full-time MWC members compete in baseball. Furthermore, three other full-time MWC members compete in wrestling. The only men's sports in which all 11 full-time MWC schools compete are football, basketball, and golf.

A FOIA request asking for "any documents or records regarding communications with officials from the Mountain West Conference (MWC) regarding any MWC interest in BSU eliminating its wrestling program or adding a baseball program in order to better align BSU's programs with the MWC, or improve conference alignment with the MWC, including emails, letters, faxes, memos, reports, text messages, voice mail message recordings, from January 1, 2016, to the present, which were sent or received (including by being cc'd or copied) by personnel in BSU's Office of the President or the BSU's Athletic Director's office," was sent not long after Boise State announced it was dropping wrestling to pursue baseball. It yielded absolutely nothing except for the minutes from a MWC conference call in which a Boise State representative brought up the fact that BSU was planning on dropping wrestling to pursue baseball. The call was from April 18, 2016, the same day BSU announced to the public their intention to do so.

We recached out to the University of Wyoming, a founding member of the Mountain West Conference and a school that competes in wrestling but not baseball, to get its perspective on the matter.

Wyoming Deputy Athletic Director Matt Whisenant agreed to speak only on behalf of the university and to the best of his knowledge. Since he assumed his role at the university in 2002, Whisenant said that the notion of "conference alignment" has never come up. Whisenant continued that each institution in the MWC is left to make those decisions on their own and that Wyoming was committed to supporting those sports that they currently field.

Like Boise State, Wyoming once supported a baseball team, and there have been efforts to restart the dormant program. In 2012, Wyoming State Senator Ray Peterson submitted a request to study the feasibility of bringing baseball back to Wyoming, which was summarily reviewed and rejected.

The sentiment in Laramie, Wyoming, located over two degrees of latitude to the south of Boise, Idaho, was summed up by Peterson's colleague, State Senator Larry Hicks, who said, "I do think that sometimes people have to deal with reality. The fact is, there's a reason they surf in Hawaii and they run dog sleds in Alaska. I would suggest that maybe we could revisit this in maybe 10 years, with global warming the way it is."

As we have determined, none of the purported reasons for why Boise State had to cut its wrestling program have held up to scrutiny, and the only undeniable constant is Kustra single-minded pursuit of his "pet project."

The Idaho Board of Education has abdicated its role of providing oversight for such decisions. The student body and alumni, both typically considered important stakeholders at public institutions of higher learning, were neither polled nor consulted. Instead, a unilateral decision was made at the top, by Kustra, for which scarcely even token gestures of accountability have been provided.

Wresting living legend Dan Gable recently delivered a message to Boise State administrators at the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, which can be found in the video below, for all parties interested in his opinion.



The referenced Affiliate Member Agreement between Boise State University and the Pac-12 Conference can be found in it's entirety below.