End could be near for WAC

Tuesday produced curious news indicating the end of the Western Athletic Conference might be near.

And it had little to do with the WAC's announcement that Seattle University was coming aboard -- another desperate sign of a league barely holding on.

The true hint came from Big Sky commissioner Doug Fullerton, who told the Idaho Statesman his conference was examining how it might lure Idaho and Utah State from the WAC.

Both schools should consider moving. Neither ever will be relevant in football -- the sport that matters most in college athletics -- at the highest level. They can be powerhouses in the Football Championship Subdivision, with the lower-level playoff system giving both schools something tangible for which to play.

Their current big goal is to make a money-losing bowl trip hardly anyone cares about.

"If down the road something happens that those guys understand and realize they can't catch the big guys and there's something else we can do that makes sense and bring some efficiencies back to the budgets of those schools ... Utah State and Idaho are the right kind of schools," Fullerton told the newspaper.

Yes, their departures would destroy the WAC -- or at least turn it into a nonfootball conference. But that league's best days were over anyway.

"We're in a better place than the WAC is," Fullerton said.

It doesn't help an upper-level conference's reputation when the Big Sky commish is talking trash about it, especially when it's the truth.

■ EX-COMMISH NOT INTO WINNING -- Capturing the NBA championship, you might think, would bring Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban back into the fold to own a baseball team.

But there doesn't seem to be any movement in that area, even if Frank McCourt has made a mockery of the once-proud Los Angeles Dodgers.

Former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent even went on an ESPN radio show Wednesday and said the outspoken Cuban would be too difficult to manage.

"I mean, winning is not everything," Vincent said, "and I'm afraid for some of these owners, they get so carried away with winning, they believe that's the objective."

It isn't?

■ EVIL PLOT BREWS -- Few things in sports are more sinister than baseball's designated hitter, and the National League has had the good sense to avoid adopting the strategy-killing rule.

That could change, especially if Major League Baseball moves an NL team to the American League to give each league 15 clubs.

The odd number would create constant interleague play, probably forcing the NL to use the DH full time.

That's because the powerful players' union wouldn't want to get rid of the DH altogether. Also, asking a team to play by a different set of rules for as many as 38 games would cause roster chaos.

"So let's call this discussion, this talk of realignment, this Trojan horse what it really seems to be: an attempt to force the DH on the NL," wrote Derrick Goold of stltoday.com.

That would be a travesty if it happens.

COMPILED BY MARK ANDERSON LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL