USU needs life preserver before WAC sinks

Forgive Utah State University's athletic department if it's beginning to feel like the proverbial red-headed stepchild that nobody loves — or wants.

After all, with each passing month, it seems the Mountain West Conference extends an invitation to another Western Athletic Conference school to jump ship and join the MWC.

And with each school's departure, the WAC is dealt another devastating blow to its increasingly dark-and-cloudy future. Indeed, if the WAC isn't already down for the count, it's wobbling badly and, at best, hanging onto the ropes trying to avoid a final, fatal knockout punch.

First, it was Boise State, the WAC's flagship football school and perennial BCS-busting big shot.

Then, when BYU was on the verge of joining the WAC in all sports but football, the Mountain West shrewdly spoiled BYU's plans by inviting Nevada and Fresno State to join the MWC, too.

Utah State had received a similar invitation to leave the WAC in favor of the Mountain West, but the Aggies stayed loyal to the promise they'd made to the WAC — and now that loyalty, though extremely admirable, appears to be repeatedly biting them squarely on the backside.

And you couldn't blame the Aggies for being more than a little bit bitter as they sadly go down with the WAC's sinking ship.

This past week, the University of Hawaii — which, at 32 years, had been the WAC's longest-tenured member — became the latest in a lengthening list of WAC schools which have announced they're leaving for the greener pastures of the Mountain West. The Warriors will join the MWC in 2012.

And each time, the WAC's loss is definitely the MWC's gain, to the point where the WAC, as Howard Cosell once said famously to Muhammad Ali, is now just a shadow of its former self.

The WAC, which served BYU and Utah's programs so well for nearly three decades, has been left scrambling to find suitable replacement schools. To that end, the WAC wound up with nice but unheralded, no-name folks like Texas-San Antonio, Texas State and Denver University, which doesn't have a football program, hopelessly trying to take the place of WAC defectors Boise State, Nevada, Fresno State and Hawaii.

It's a desperate, losing battle the WAC can't win.