Lehigh Football Nation

Recently, I wrote an entire article about how the way the NCAA allows schools to become FBS is broken. It turns out I had no idea exactly how broken until I was guided towards the Idaho Vandals Football Consultant report, helpfully posted in full on the University of Idaho's website . In that report, one of the possible avenues that Idaho was mulling over was to join the WAC. I was confused - the WAC had stopped sponsoring FBS football long ago, a couple of years after then-commissioner Karl Benson finished his uncanny impersonation of Baghdad Bob in regards to saving FBS football for that conference - only to leave his job to take over at the Sun Belt Conference. But it turns out, after a fresh read of the NCAA rulebook, it is indeed true. Like a bad horror movie, the zombified WAC football conference could indeed resurrect itself - and, in the process, shows how royally screwed up this system of FCS and FBS movement really is.

(Photo Credit: Kurt Wilson of the Missoulian) You can get plenty of hits on Google if you combine the two words "WAC" and "trouble". But probably not as many as there would have been even just a few weeks ago. That's because the WAC - who has two teams currently ranked in the Top 25 in Boise State and Nevada - has announced in the next 30 to 60 days that it will be offering bids to four, and perhaps five, potential members . If you came back from Mars and read these statements, you'd probably think that the future for the WAC is rosy.  Unfortunately for the WAC, however, Boise State and Nevada will be bolting for the Mountain West conference starting in 2011 - and while the WAC might attempt to reload with a combination of basketball-only schools and FCS football-playing schools, make no mistake about it: the WAC is still in a real struggle for its survival. It's in this atmosphere that Montana athletic director Jim O'Day sent an email to a...