John Blanchette

There is something about the University of Idaho mulling its athletic future that suggests a chess novice playing against Deep Blue. No move seems to hold promise.

There is something about the University of Idaho mulling its athletic future that suggests a chess novice playing against Deep Blue. No move seems to hold promise.

It is sad comedy, this dry rot eating at the Western Athletic Conference, the University of Idaho’s happy athletic home. Here’s one of the amusing parts: So many change orders of addition, subtraction and dissection have attended the perpetual remodeling of the WAC that Idaho athletic director Rob Spear some time ago began deflecting requests for his thoughts, at least until the crew takes a smoke break. Then he unfolds an old script about “moving forward,” and awaits the next round of defections. And so it was this week, when more hell broke loose.

Mike Leach was impressed – with the play of his team off and on, yes, but also that cars en route to see it were backed up for blocks.

We might have been a little worried about Bill Doba when he pointed his rig toward the Midwest and left our midst. He seemed a bit beat up when his five-year run as football coach at Washington State came to a strangely defined end in 2007. A year earlier, the relentless cruelty of cancer had taken his wife, Judy – not just his long-ago college sweetheart but the truest of soul mates. He had put in 46 years on somebody’s sideline and wouldn’t be the first guy not to have the transition to the non-coaching life take. But he’s just fine – and more than that.