The Fresno State Athletic Corporation's board of directors is scheduled to hold what could be its last meeting of the fiscal year at 10:30 a.m. Monday at the North Gym Annex.

I'm predicting it'll be the most interesting board meeting in Athletic Corp. history.

Bulldogs athletics is at a turning point that is first and foremost about money. The Athletic Corp. board oversees financial policy for Fresno State's intercollegiate athletic program. Hence my prediction.

The long-anticipated realignment of Division I conferences is upon us. We all know the recent events: The Pac-10 acquires the Big 12's Colorado; the Big Ten acquires the Big 12's Nebraska; Texas and a handful of the Longhorns' smaller Big 12 siblings decide to stay put; the Pac-10 on Wednesday sends an invite to the Mountain West's Utah.

And, of course, Boise State, the Western Athletic Conference's brightest football star, accepts an invitation to join the Mountain West after the 2010-11 season.

Fresno State now finds itself on the cusp of an eight-school WAC: The Bulldogs, San Jose State, Hawaii, Nevada, Utah State, Idaho, New Mexico State and Louisiana Tech.

Simply put, for Fresno State to view such a hodgepodge of dispersed, poorly-funded programs as a permanent home is to accept Division I intercollegiate athletic suicide.

I'm guessing Bulldogs boosters in the 35 years since Jim Sweeney came to town saying Fresno State athletics was a "sleeping giant" and he planned to shake it awake have contributed more than a half-billion dollars toward transforming the Bulldogs into a national power with the will and assets to stay the course. The WAC, circa July 1, 2011, is a repudiation of that dream.

But what to do?

Fresno State athletics has been drifting toward this reckoning ever since that day in the previous decade when the presidents of BYU, Utah, New Mexico and several other schools killed the two-division, 16-team WAC by creating the Mountain West.

There's no use here again going over the charges, counter-chargers and justifications for the dismemberment. It's sufficient to say Fresno State was counting on a 16-school conference stretching from Honolulu to Dallas-Fort Worth -- blessed as it was with some of college sports most storied programs -- to be the TV-friendly, trend-setting vehicle for fulfilling Sweeney's vow.

How strange and distant the 1980s and 1990s now feel. There was a time in the late 20th century when Fresno State seemed to be slowly yet inexorably moving toward full partnership with college sports' top programs. It was destiny.

Then the 16-team WAC imploded. Fresno State has spent the past 15 years or so struggling with a galling paradox: An athletic program capable of producing regional and national excellence stuck in a secondary conference that has come to define Division I organizational and strategic instability.

The WAC for a decade-and-a-half has been a constantly-changing collection of orphans. Yet, upward mobility is constantly on everyone's mind.

Remember the WAC strategic plan of four years ago, with its ambitious non-binding goals for revenue growth laid out for each university? It was the product of honest, sincere, admirable men and women who surely, in their heart of hearts, knew it was nonsense. The WAC, stretching over a handful of time zones, was never going to grow itself into prominence. The only viable strategic plan for any of the WAC's members was to find a bigger, stronger, richer conference.

Boise State has done so.

Of course, none of this is a mystery to the men and women who spend most of their waking moments dealing with Fresno State athletics. And, of course, the Bulldogs may be on the cusp not of an eight-school conference of despair but membership in ... I don't know -- maybe the Mountain West.

The Athletic Corp. board's agenda on Monday deals with all of these issues. Not in so many words. But the agenda's key item is this:

"Budget Committee Report
"*Comparison of 2009-2010 Budget to Actual
"*Approval of 2010-2011 Athletics Department Budget"

I suggest it will be impossible for the directors on Monday to fulfill their fiduciary obligations to Fresno State's many stakeholders if they fail to publicly discuss in detail how the epochal events of the past month affect the nearly complete FY 2010 financial statement and the proposed FY 2011 budget.

For example, in every other year Fresno State could guarantee to its fans a Boise State football team arriving in Bulldog Stadium. That was a guaranteed opportunity to charge premium ticket prices. The Bulldogs travel to Boise this fall, which means Boise State football may never again come to Fresno. What does this mean to the long-term projected gate money for a Bulldogs football program that is the single biggest generator of cash for an intercollegiate athletic program perpetually challenged by high fixed costs and inconsistent revenues?

I mention this one small issue to give you a sense of the many, many, many pressures and questions facing the directors on Monday.

I've attended a fair number of meetings of the Athletic Corp. board, and here I must admit that I was in my "wishful thinking" mode when I stated at the top of this blog that Monday's board meeting will be unusually interesting.

The Athletic Corp. is one of those quasi-public entities that, as university officials have repeatedly reminded me, is not subject to the usual open meeting and public records laws. No one has ever confused Athletic Corp. board meetings with, say, a Fresno City Council meeting where public debate and pointed questioning are the order of the day. Athletic Corp. directors and the Athletic Department staff generally review the most important topics in what must surely appear to the meeting's audience (usually just me, former associate athletic director Diane Milutinovich and former wrestling coach Dennis DeLiddo) as an indecipherable code of vague generalities, financial figures with little or no context, and summations heavy on optimism.

The future of Fresno State athletics is in such a delicate spot, and caution is so thoroughly ingrained in the board, that I wouldn't be surprised if Monday's meeting transpires with nary a suggestion of conference realignment and the Bulldogs' role in it.

That's why I'm counting on John Wayne to work his magic on Boeh.

Boeh is a non-voting board member but, as the Athletic Department's chief executive officer, he at times dominates the meetings.

He did so at the March 8 board meeting. At the request of board Chairman Paul Oliaro, Boeh played for his fellow directors a video that itemized the athletic program's rapid and remarkable recovery from recent NCAA regulatory and Title IX problems.

But this wasn't a mere recitation, bullet point by boring bullet point, of successes under Boeh's watch. Boeh showed his creative side. He gave the presentation a theme, one that Boeh took from what he said is one of his favorite movies -- "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance."

Boeh's presentation included clips from the 1962 western starring Wayne and Jimmy Stewart.

To cut to the chase, the movie as described by Boeh is about the power of myth and the eternal struggle of truth, usually so much more prosaic than legend, to emerge into sunlight.

Boeh's point: Fresno State's athletic program in the past five years had been unfairly misjudged by a public too long manipulated by electronic and print media concerned more with sensationalism that reality.

"Out here a man settles his own problems," Wayne says to Stewart in one of the movie clips.

With his video, Boeh tried to settle his problem with the media by setting the record straight.

Here's a hope that Boeh, inspired by "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," uses Monday's board meeting to set the record straight again. It's the perfect time for the administrator who knows the most about the challenges facing Fresno State athletics to publicly explain what is happening to the Bulldogs as the earthquake of conference realignment rolls on, and what might happen when the shaking stops.

After all, "Athletics Directors Report" is part of Monday's agenda.

If Boeh feels a board meeting is the wrong vehicle for such a task, then he should consider scheduling another of his hour-long question-and-answer sessions with the media on Monday. I recall two such media meetings conducted by Boeh, but none in more than a year.

In the movie, a legend grew that it was the character played by Stewart who shot town thug Liberty Valance. This heroic deed propelled the Stewart character into a successful political career.

In reality, it was the character played by Wayne, standing in an alley, who shot Valance. One of the "Liberty Valance" clips selected by Boeh showed the Wayne character dispatching Valance without fanfare or notice, then striding off camera (as only the Duke could) wearing a countenance that bespoke grim satisfaction: He had fulfilled his civic duty.

Monday is Boeh's opportunity to have a John Wayne moment.