And wouldn’t you know it, I ordered the coffee and fired up the computer only to find out that the Internet was down. I couldn’t get an IP address. I convinced them to reboot the router, which turned out to be a mistake because they inexplicably put their business operations and “Free WiFi” on the same router. So their entire system was down during the reboot and nobody could buy anything. Oops.

Anyhow, rebooting the router didn’t work. So I decided to put my nice new Android phone to the test and see if I could tether (connect computer to phone to Internet). This involved two OSes that I am not remarkably familiar with, Linux and Android. But I got it to work! Booyah! Linux has actually made significant strides in making it easier to install third party software. And Android has turned out to work quite well.

I do have to watch my usage, since I’m on a 4GB limit. At least for now. I called Verizon to ask about something else and the girl on the other end very helpfully pointed out that I was only put on the limit by mistake. She submitted a request to get me back to unlimited. We’ll see if it happens.

I only got up to .5GB last month. I only had it part of the month, but I spent the whole time downloading apps and other stuff that would use an abnormal amount of bandwidth. So I feel pretty confident about staying within the limits.

Unfortunately, I can’t check past usage because of a glitch on Verizon’s site. Another glitch on the site is why I had to call. And yet another glitch is why I was put on 4GB in the first place. Verizon’s website needs work.

Not United, though, that’s for sure. In fact, they’ve changed up their pre-flight lecture routine to… clarify… how serious they are about this. They repeat like fifty times that “off means off (and not Airplane Mode)” and have added rather than subtracted to the rules: no cell phones on - even in Airplane Mode - at any point in the flight.

As someone who uses their phone for a host of purposes, this is lame.

It’s also rather counterproductive. Presumably, they make a special case against phones for fear that people won’t actually turn the radios off. But the same can be said for tablets, which are allowed. Or computers, which are allowed.

A lot of this goes to what I think is the impossibility of drafting any sort of rules on this with any consistency.

It’s not unlike a large software company that I used to work for. They prohibited Pocket PCs for security reasons. But they allowed smartphones for productivity reasons. At the time, a smartphone was a Pocket PC with voice/data capabilities and a camera.

Due to ongoing sleep deficits, the inability to use (certain) electronics did not really turn out to be an issue this time. I was usually asleep during take-off and landing did not take long enough for boredom to set in before I could turn my cell back on.

What’s really interesting about this list is how much naming is apparently a national phenomenon. I would not at all have been surprised to see different names in different regions. One name popping up over here and expanding. Another popping up over there. Instead, Isabella is #1 in California to New York, Oklahoma to Rhode Island. I actually know one baby named Isabella and another named Sophia. Truth be told, I consider both of these names (almost all of the ones listed, actually) to be vast improvements over the names I am seeing in classrooms. My concern is that there is less here than meets the eye and the main reason that Isabella shows up and Brianne doesn’t is because the latter is broken down into fifteen spellings. Here is hoping not!

I actually know a little Isabella and a little Sophia. I didn’t realize that they were on the cusp of a tidal wive (if it’s that). Interestingly enough, in an alternate version of my life, my old flame and I (who got married in this timeline) named our daughter Sophia. I actually chose the name solely due to its gnostic significance and not because I’d heard anybody else that had it.

I am curious where the names came from, if anywhere. I mean, other than the fact that they have been around a while. Why the resurgence now? That’s one of the great mysteries of names, though.

The boys names are almost all straight from the Bible. And William. Clancy actually wanted to name our son (if we have one) William/Will (and I actually have a fondness for Truman and it was my brother’s pick!) (I mean William as in William and Truman as in Truman, not William and Truman as in my actual first and last name - both William and Truman are family names). We’d actually sort of had a girl’s name picked out, but recently Clancy discovered there is a family name very similar to what we chose (in the same way that Caroline is similar to Carolyn) and so we might be changing course.

And for your enjoyment, music!

The cheap signs smashed into lawns and along the corners of busy intersections are hard to miss. “We Buy Junk Cars!” ‘’Cash for Your House!” ‘’Computer Repair.” The eyesores have vexed Hollywood Mayor Peter Bober for the past few years as he wastes valuable resources plucking up the signs only to watch them pop up in even greater numbers.

While stopped at a red light a few months ago, Bober studied the unsightly signs and came to a realization that would help him fight their proliferation: The criminals had left their calling cards in the form of business phone numbers.

“These people want us to call them, so let’s call them so much their head spins,” said Bober, who bought a $300 software program in March that makes robocalls to the businesses. The volume of calls has reached as high as 20 calls each to 90 businesses in a day.

Not sure if it’s legal, but I like it if it is. I’ve had that thought before. It’s not like we don’t know who is putting up the signs. The companies in question can say “Hey, that must have been done by some overenthusiastic boy we hired, sorry or whatever” or something, but this gives a particular incentive for them to take it down. There’s little more obnoxious than repeated calls. And unlike tickets, you don’t end up losing money due to court costs (if the businesses are smart, they collect the fines and then go to court and demand a separate hearing on each ticket).

More locally, there is the case of Kevin Erickson. The first time I met Kevin, it was because he called the police on me. We’d just moved in and he wanted the police to look into who these people were hanging out at the house next door to his aging mother’s. I haven’t seen much of him since his mother died.

Erickson has been in the Callie paper recently. He is an entrepreneur of sorts with a couple of businesses, selling off old stuff. Not the old stuff that we approve of like antiques and whatnot, but rather old cars and tractor equipment. There is a push to shut him down because the old tractors and such are considered, at least by some, to be unsightly. It doesn’t help that one of Erickson’s lots are seen by everyone who passes through Callie.

Now, in one sense, I am more sympathetic to Redstone than Callie, and in another sense I am more sympathetic to Callie. I have some sympathy for Redstone because it does have a pretty serious image problem. As a sort of junky place. And things like cars on cinder blocks for years on-end aren’t helping. And, to their credit, they’re also starting to offer people free disposal service. Whatever it takes, just so long as you get rid of your junk! Callie, in my view, has less to complain about. It doesn’t have a huge image problem. In fact, Erickson’s lots are really the only place in the entire town that is any sort of problem. On the other hand, unlike with Redstone, the lots do stick out like a sore thumb.

Ultimately, I sort of give Redstone a pass. But generally speaking, I look at some of these things as the things that make Arapaho what it is. And not entirely in the negative way. The fact that some people around here are only vaguely aware of what an HOA is just makes my heart sing a little. And when I am driving in the middle of nowhere, a broken down car in the middle of a field is actually more interesting than it is unsightly. The mountains out here are beautiful. We have trees and rivers. But I consider some of the broken down sheds to be a part of the landscape. There are some things about Arapaho that I consider unsightly, but these are not among them.

At the same time, I sort of do understand why these things are considered unattractive in suburban Colosse (for example). I’d probably be kind of upset if I just spent $250k on a house (which is a lot, in Colosse) only to have some hucksters next door making the neighborhood look a lot more like that other neighborhood where people spent $150k on their house.

However, the most enduring characteristic of Arapaho, and I would actually say the Mountain West more generally (outside some of the larger cities) is that you simply don’t have to care about such things. It’s the freedom of not caring. I read somewhere that the average car on the road is 11 years old, which once upon a time would have seemed bizarre. But around here, I even see Dodge Colts. Nobody cares. We live in a 2,400 square foot house (not including the basement) that is adjacent to trailers and mobile homes. It’s not ideal, but unlike the hustle and bustle of the suburbs where the “right” neighborhood means everything, it’s actually quite liberating.

The freaking out over Erickson’s lot reminds me of one of the things I was happy to leave behind from Colosse.

Every now and again I will do something conspicuously right. I bought an old cop’s shirt at a thrift store and would sometimes wear it unbuttoned over a white t-shirt and for whatever reason strangers would compliment me on it back in the early aughts.

And, apparently, I am a very good Walmart dresser.

When I suddenly had to replace my missing warddrobe in Genesis, we went to Walmart in order to restock. I bought a black plaid button shirt and some black jeans. Both of Clancy’s sisters complimented me on it even before they realized where I had bought the outfit and put it together.

It came up again at the wedding when their aunt complimented me on my suspenders (suspenders being another thing that I have done right over the years - people apparently like suspenders) and commented “I’ll bet you didn’t get that at Walmart.”

I hadn’t gotten it at Walmart the day before, but with the exception of the shirt, I had indeed gotten all of it at Walmart. The pants were Wrangler slacks, though, and not the typical Puritan/George that one things of as Walmart pants.

The whole weekend was another one of those God Bless Walmart situations. If you’re stranded without your luggage, there’s one place you can go to get things in order in a jiff even in a comparatively rural place like Genesis.

Inmates at the Milner Ridge jail were able to watch clear-as-day commercials on an explicit channel that was otherwise blocked by their satellite TV service, Justice Minister Andrew Swan said Thursday.

“Apparently, on that blocked channel, there were periodic advertisements running from 30 to 90 seconds,” Swan said.

“And immediately on becoming aware of this, the officials at Milner Ridge called the service provider and made immediate arrangements to make sure that didn’t recur.”

The jail officials only became aware of the problem during a Jan. 9 tour of the facility by Tory justice critic Kelvin Goertzen. About 10 inmates were watching hardcore programming in a common area, Goertzen said, and when a jail guard turned off the TV, they managed to turn it back on again briefly with a remote control.

A few things jumped out at me about this: First, were the inmates unaware that there were visitors? I realize that we’re not dealing with the most future-time-oriented people, but you’d think that this sort of thing might cause problems.

More broadly, though, is this really any sort of outrage? I mean, I get it that they are in prison you don’t want to make things too comfortable for them. But the sexual frustration of prison famously manifests itself in very unfortunate ways. It really seems to me that there are worse things than pornography. There are suggestions that pornography reduces rape, but even if we disbelieve that there is not much to suggest that it encourages it. It may not make much of a difference, it may alleviate the tension that causes all sorts of bad things, but humans are sexual beings and I think there have to be larger concerns than this.
One more thing. Here’s the opening paragraph:

It appears a technical glitch is to blame for a display of explicit sex in a Manitoba jail that aroused concerns by the Opposition Progressive Conservatives.

There were probably a lot of grins and groans in the newsroom over that one.

The South Shore Regional School Board suspended William Swinimer from Forest Heights Community School in Chester Basin for five days for wearing a shirt emblazoned with the words, “Life is wasted without Jesus.”

School board Supt. Nancy Pynch-Worthylake said the wording on the shirt is problematic because it is directed at the beliefs of others.

“If I have an expression that says ‘My life is enhanced with Jesus,’ then there’s no issue with that, everybody is able to quickly understand that that’s my opinion about my own belief,” she said.

I do see that as a distinction with a difference, but it’s a rather murky terrain.

Jonathan McLoed argues thusly:

That’s some nice hair-splitting Ms. Pynch-Worthylake is attempting, but it demonstrates an ignorance towards Mr. Swiminer’s faith. Christianity is, certainly, an incredibly personal faith, but it is not introverted and it is not weak. The message of the t-shirt is a universal declaration. It is unequivocal, but it is not pointed.

Granted, the shirt did not say “My life would be wasted without Jesus” but rather that life in general is. That can easily be taken as suggesting that your life would be wasted without Jesus. And so there can be a little provocation construed there. Having said that, the ambiguity involved does not lend itself to an ideal situation for administrative discretion. They might be more willing to pull the trigger in some cases and not in others. They might see one instance through the prism of tolerance to the wearer, and the other through the prism of intolerance to people other than the wearer, even when they are essentially the same thing. James Hanley argues in the comments to McLoed’s post:

Yes, that’s what it’s saying to those students. And a student saying “Jesus is not real” is making a clear statement against the Christian kid’s life.

And both T-Shirts ought to be allowed.

Both should, or neither should. You can argue that “Jesus is not real” is a statement of belief not directed at anyone else, but it makes an implicit statement every bit as much as the Wasted shirt does. Murky.

It’s hard to say whether the administration is in error with this ban without knowing how they would respond to similar messages from other groups. What’s not hard to say is that regardless of their decision, they suspended the kid for five days. At my old school, you could punch someone in the face and be suspended for fewer than five days. I want to know what sort of mediation was tried here. This comes across not as conflict alleviation, but punitive action. I am not certain why they couldn’t have simply said “each and every day you wear that shirt, you are suspended for the rest of the day.”

In a “bizarre crisis” for Yahoo, CEO Scott Thompson has been forced to admit that he did not receive a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Stonehill College — despite long claiming on his resume that he had. (He actually studied accounting and business administration.) Thompson was hired only four months ago to revive the ailing search engine, but now the hedge fund Third Point — an activist shareholder that is trying to gain control of Yahoo’s board of directors — says it will hit the company with a lawsuit if Thompson isn’t fired. The controversy comes at the worst time for Yahoo, which recently fired 2,000 workers as part of a massive overhaul designed to help it better compete with Google and Facebook.

People lying on their resumes probably happens more often than we realize, even when it comes to concrete and checkable things like this. Which to me is the most bizarre thing: this was concrete and checkable. Was there no background check when he was hired to run the company? I understand not checking up on everybody, but I’ve gotten a better lookover when applying for peon jobs.

I find this a lot more interesting than the fact that he lied. The group that uncovered the lie is wondering the same thing:

The fund, Third Point LLC, issued a legal demand to review internal Yahoo documents that may explain how much research the company’s board did about Thompson’s background before hiring him in January. Third Point contends it’s entitled to the records under the laws of Delaware, where Yahoo is incorporated.

Yahoo didn’t respond to requests for comments about Third Point’s demand.

After initially brushing off the misinformation as an “inadvertent error,” Yahoo’s board opened an investigation into the circumstances that led to the computer science degree being including on Thompson’s bio. Thompson told employees that he “respects the process” and will provide whatever information the board requests.

I guess it’s possible that he never claimed the computer science degree during the interview process and came up with it later (or it just magically appeared). I don’t find this revelation as troubling as I do simply baffling.

I understand resume-lying when it comes to people who haven’t accomplished anything yet. I… exaggerated… the nature of my employment at a company early on (it couldn’t be checked because the company was defunct). But it didn’t take long before I scaled it back into oblivion (now it’s just there as part of the timeline). Thompson is the former head of PayPal, which strikes me as a better job than Yahoo, to be honest.

Several years ago, Notre Dame hired a guy named George O’Leary to be their head football coach and it came to light that he had lied on his resume. Another rather stupid thing. UND dumped O’Leary and he actually went on to be a successful coach at Central Florida (Notre Dame went on to hire Ty Willingham.) O’Leary explained it as having lied early on to get that first job and then not being able to “scale it back” later on. Which I guess makes sense and applies to Thompson as well. Maybe. But it still seems to me that anyone who is going to check up on past claims (”Hey, three years ago you said you X, now you don’t, what gives?”) is going to check up on the veracity of the actual claims.

Being in a Catholic church is always an odd feeling for me. All of the trimmings so closely mirror that of its Episcopalian counterparts, and the services take on the same structure, but the rules are different.

The priest started off giving what may have been the best wedding sermon I have heard to date. From there, things sort of went off the rails. Where, precisely, they went off the rails is a subject of disagreement amongst the Corrigan/Himmelreich/Truman clan.

He started off talking about relationships and the transition between a relationship where mutual needs are being met to a relationship where you plow forward even when your needs are not being met. He did so in what I thought was a very good way.

There were some murmurs when he defined plowing forward or not as the choice between “you split up or you grow.” This bothered some people because the bride’s mother was divorced and they felt it as a sort of slap in the face.

My thought was… what is he supposed to say, exactly? Leaving aside the Catholic views on divorce, it is the goal of most marriages - certainly those with a religious component - that they endure. There are exceptions to this, but they are (in my view) rightly viewed as exceptions. To an extent, “it’s okay to get divorced” is not what couples want to hear, as they get married. It certainly isn’t what I wanted to hear, even know I was and am fully aware of that option.

This is one of the stresses of a diverse culture. Society itself legally permits divorce - and rightfully so - but one of the things that allows for freedom are the cultural pushbacks to abuses of it or resistance of the utilization of the freedom to begin with. To argue that all legal options should be considered equally valid from a social standpoint actually becomes an argument against things we disapprove of being legal in the first place.

As far as the parents of the bride are concern, they had one of the most benign reasons for divorce there are, in my book. One of them had a life-altering experience and was altered. The other was not altered. This resulted in genuinely irreconcilable differences.

But even when we accept the rationale for a divorce, it can still be chalked up as a disappointment. As something that did not go as planned. And, to a degree, not something that we should tip-toe around when giving sagely advice to a newly married couple that hopes not to meet the same fate. For most, even if it’s the least-bad option when the time comes, it’s still an undesirable fate.

And without the condemnation or prohibition of law, it’s up to society and social institutions - including churches - to say so. The undesirability of divorce ought to be a part of our dialogue of marriage.

Of course, a Catholic priest would say the same thing about the next part, wherein he incorporated God into it. As I would say to the others, what should I expect from a Catholic priest? Even an Episcopalian one would bring it up. I guess my objection to the next part - which involved a married couple’s primary duty being to God and not to one another or society or future children - is an example of why I would not make a remarkably good Catholic.

* - It’s called such, and you are probably envisioning something more grand than the venerable-but-quaint cottage - occupying a field - that it is.

I also could not locate my passport book or passport card, which made matters worse. What I could find, however, were three expired drivers licenses (Cascadia, Estacado, and Deseret) and my expired passport.

In a sane world, that would have been enough. The point of having identification at the airport is not to make sure that you have your papers in order (unless you’re leaving the country). The point of having identification at the airport is to ascertain or validate your identity.

Your driver’s license or passport need not be current in order to do this. It could have expired yesterday. It could have a hole punched through it because you relocated. You did not cease to be who you were when you got a new license or a new passport.

Granted, if you’re talking about identification that is fifteen years old, maybe the license isn’t the best way to ascertain your identity. But two of the three licenses I had would have been valid had it not been for a relocation.

Fortunately, I found my current passport book. Mom pestered me a great deal to get it renewed last year and I owe her some gratitude because I wouldn’t have had it had she not been such a pain about it.

Anyhow, even this only got me so far. The guy at the airport demanded another form of identification after I handed him the passport. Even though the passport is every bit as valid as the driver’s license that was missing. He decided to quiz me on the contents of the passport and let me through. I got the feeling he was expecting a “thank you” for letting me fly.

I wanted to say, “Dude, I had a ticket and valid identification. You are supposed to let me fly.”

I fear that at that point, he would have found a reason not to. But seriously, if the TSA is not going to follow the list of acceptable identification, why bother having a list?. (And beyond that, what logical reason is there to fear someone with a passport compared to a driver’s license? As far as national security goes, it is much more important that we be able to have faith in the legitimacy of a passport than in the legitimacy of a driver’s license.

Everyone who was left over had started or gone through Deseret as a part of their flight. Obviously, something had gone wrong between the Deseret-to-Colosse and Colosse-to-Ephesus transfer.

The person at the counter wasn’t remarkably helpful. He couldn’t tell us where our baggage was (whether they’d failed to make the transfer in Colosse or whether they were still sitting in Deseret somehow.

I had thought, up to that point, that those things would be scanned just about everywhere they go.

United has a 100 number where you can call and get “updates” on where your luggage is, but they never had any new information. When I asked to speak to an agent, it always seemed like they could tell me more or do more for me. If they want us to use the automated system, they really need to make it better.

We arrived down there on Thursday and left on Sunday. The wedding was on Saturday, so we had to have a shopping detour on Friday because who knew when exactly our luggage was getting there (not the automated system, that’s not who). In all, it cost us $200 to get the clothes we needed to replace the clothes that were missing.

Out clothes actually got there on Saturday afternoon, so I was able to wear the clothes I had packed rather than the miss-sized clothes I had just bought. We’ll see what I will be able to return of the clothes we just bought.

There actually came a point where we were hoping that the luggage simply wouldn’t arrive in time for them to be sent to us. As it stands, we got our clothes in time for the wedding, but we got the luggage in time to have to lug it all back to the airport.

Which brings me to my last thing: We paid $25 per suitcase per way for a total of $100. For clothes we didn’t even have for a majority of the trip. The baggage fees actually never bothered me all that much, but I will definitely say that it smarted a bit to pay the baggage fees for the way home.

I commented thusly:

It takes less time to look at my watch than to fish my smartphone out of its holster. It would take even longer out of a pocket. We’re talking about seconds, but seconds every time I look at my watch, which I do a lot.

Yeah, I wear a smartphone holster. And cheap watches. Some of which have big faces. I’m already married and don’t live in the northeast. So I can’t imagine for the life of me why it matters.

It came across as more defensive-sounding than I had intended. The first part is in response to a bunch of people saying that watches are essentially jewelry and serve no purpose. Obviously, I disagree.

Despite the fact that I can’t imagine why it matters, I probably put more thought into watch-wearing than most people. But it’s all internal. I don’t expect anyone to care. I’ve only had three watches that anyone has commented on. I have six watches, three brown-based and three black-based. I match them with the rest of what I am wearing. I have a thing about my shoes, belt, and watch all needing to match. I keep black and brown boots and belts around and always go one way or the other. If only I could find a brown smartphone holster, then I would be set. When I accidentally wearing my black watch with brown belts and shoes, I think to myself “Well, at least the watch matches my belt holster…” as a small comfort.

Two of the six watchesare of a casual/geeky variety. They’re my most expensive ones because they’re Casios with both a digital and an analog display ($30 a piece). One has a canvasy band with velcro and the other a rubber one. But I like them because they keep track of the date for me and don’t have to be reset five months of the year, and I never have to worry about whether it’s been reset, though I now have a ritual of resetting my watches anyway. (Speaking of which…) And they fit with my geeky sensibilities, I suppose. Two of them are US Polos ($20 a piece) with large faces (a no-no). Grade-schoolers love these, apparently. Two of them are the same sort of generic cheap watches that I used to wear all the time. Even though they’re the cheapest, they actually look best when I am dressed professionally.

But this is all my OCD self. Other than the grade schoolers with the US Polos, the only compliment I’ve ever gotten on a watch was a $15 metal-band latch watch that I am sure would horrify Siggy. Up until recently, all I wore was the generic cheap watches. All I cared about was whether it worked, whether I could tell the time in the dark, and whether it had the date on it. That last one isn’t a dealbreaker for me.

Anyhow, all of this is kind of funny when you consider how old-school I am with work attire and my belief that professionals should have to wear shirt-and-ties. And if I ever got my way and professionals were required to dress professionally again, I would probably favor discarding watches like the one I am wearing right now.

The Western Athletic Conference (WAC, pronounced “whack”) is one of the oldest top (sub)division conference. More than one in five Football Bowl Subdivision (FCS, formerly Division I-A) schools have played in the WAC at one point during its existence. However, it’s historically been a launching bad to another conference. Most of the founding members bolted the conference at once to form the Mountain West Conference, and the MWC has been incorporating WAC schools since. The last round of realignment means the likely end to the venerable conference. They were having trouble getting back up to 8 football-playing teams before, and now they’re losing five of the seven members they have to the MWC, Conference USA, and even the lowly Sun Belt Conference (generally considered the weakest of the lot). The remaining two football schoolsare Idaho and New Mexico State, and the latter is well-positioned to go back to the Sun Belt from whence it came seven or so years ago. Idaho is typically a poor performer - a relatively small school living in Boise State’s shadow. Idaho’s existence as an FBS program hangs in the balance.

So with only Idaho and New Mexico State remaining as football programs, and Boise State, Seattle University and the University of Denver as non-FB schools (Boise plays football obviously, but their membership does not include football), how does the conference survive? It probably doesn’t. But there is one intriguing possibility that could actually leave the conference stronger and more stable than it has been in a long time. Not “stronger” in the sense of performance (all hope is probably lost there), but in the sense of having an identity rather than being a temporary home for schools from Louisiana to Hawaii. East of the Mississippi lies the Mid-American Conference, which provides a good blue-print as a generally unimpressive but nonetheless stable conference with only a few of its many (13, at the moment) members angling for something better.

The first step to the plan is to start approaching a couple of state governors. This might be best left to Butch Otter, the governor of Idaho. Approach the governors of Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Those three states are relevant because they have no representation in the FBS division. Montana, Montana State, and North Dakota are or will soon be in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS, formerly Division I-AA) Big Sky Conference. South Dakota, South Dakota State, and North Dakota State are in the Missouri Valley Football Conference (and the Summit League for other sports).

Montana and Montana State were approached about joining the WAC last year and declined to do so. One of the main reasons behind their decision was the perceived instability of the WAC. The other was uncertainty about rising to the level of the competition and fear of ending up where Idaho (a former Big Sky power) did, as well we the required initial investment for Montana State to meet the WAC’s standards. The arguments in favor of making the jump were financial (the FCS playoffs are expensive and being in the FCS limits income from payout games where they play the Washington Generals to a powerhouse school), logistical (FCS playoffs add weeks to the schedule and scheduling out-of-conference games at home can be tough), and most important prestige: they want to be associated with the likes of Idaho and (likely departing WAC member) Utah State rather than Eastern Washington and Weber State. Almost all of the reasons for making the transition still hold true (scheduling is less of an issue now due to Big Sky expansion), and most of the reasons against are mitigated under my plan.

The Dakota schools were never approached. They only recently made the transition from Division II, though they have succeeded in FCS (North Dakota State is the reigning champion). Their attendance makes them less attractive than they otherwise would be. But as institutions that Montana and Montana State would want to be associated with, they’re a better pick than some of the schools that are leaving. This represents a unique opportunity for the Dakota schools to make the jump to the highest subdivision without having to do the sorts of things a school has to do to make the transition. They’d be on the hook for the extra scholarships (FBS has 22 more scholarships than FCS), the Title IX compliance (adding football scholarships means adding something to women’s sports as well), and sponsoring a couple more sports, but they can probably get by without the customary stadium upgrades and such. It would require some investment, but it is an opportunity that will not come around again.

If you can bring along the two Montana schools and four Dakota schools, with Idaho, Seattle, and Denver, that makes seven football programs and ten total programs in six almost-contiguous states. That’s a very healthy conference core, which the WAC has lacked since 1996. From there you try to get New Mexico State to stick around. Due to the nature of the new conference - one of state flagship and land-grant universities - with which it fits, they might be willing to do it over the Sun Belt (which, in addition to being a weak conference, has a number of colleges of less-than-stellar reputations that are second or third tier in their own states). So you have either 7/10 or 8/11 teams (football/othersports) with seven or eight state flagships/land-grants, two urban privates, and Boise.

The last trip involves going to California. Two schools that were on the conference’s radar before are UC-Davis and Cal Poly. Both ultimately declined, in part because they had an invitation to the Big Sky Conference, which was good enough, and because they didn’t want to leave the Big West for non-football sports. The Big Sky Conference without Montana and Montana State is notably less prestigious (Montana or Montana State has won the conference title or a share of it for eighteen of the last twenty years). And the WAC could easily extend the two schools a football-only invitation (as football-playing counterparts to football-less Denver and Seattle). Once again, this is a unique opportunity for those two schools. And though they are not a good fit geographically, they are a good fit academically.

That would bring the conference to 9/10 or 10/11, full of like-minded schools that aren’t going anywhere. The village has been pillaged. The slate has been almost blanked. The conference can redefine itself as something other than the hodge-podge. The level of competition would probably be the weakest in the FBS. But that actually allows the schools to grow together without having to suffer the immediate poundings that caused Idaho such problems. But more than that, six of the schools come from states that have no college football allegiances. In Montana, they pre-empt SEC games to show Montana and Montana State play Northern This State and Eastern That. New Mexico State has all of their games televised. The Dakota schools probably could, too, in the Dakotas. This isn’t the same as having big markets, but the depth of the devotion will definitely outstrip that of most of the departing schools (Utah State has to compete with BYU for affections, Texas State with a plethora of power schools, and so on).

They would have to get waiver upon waiver from the NCAA to go forward with this, but I think under the circumstances they would have a pretty good chance of doing so. Nobody save the MWC has any reason to want the WAC dead. But more to the point, you have six senators and three governors to contend with representing three states with no representation in the FBS. They had already worked to accommodate the WAC’s troubles. This adds much more incentive to do so.