When athletic director Scott Barnes looks out over the college sports world after a tumultuous summer of conference upheaval that has left his Utah State Aggies on the brink of disaster, he sees a landscape that still is not done shifting.

"Potentially the tip of the iceberg" is all we have seen so far, he said.

Which is one of the reasons the Western Athletic Conference is fighting so hard to keep Fresno State and Nevada from leaving the league until July 1, 2012 — it has filed a lawsuit asking a judge to order them to stay — even though both of them want to leave for the Mountain West Conference a year earlier.

Many officials around the league believe, like Barnes, that there could be still more dramatic conference realignment to come within the next year. If that happens, it could open the doors for the WAC to find stronger replacements for its outgoing teams than would be available if Fresno State and Nevada are allowed to leave next summer.

In that case, the league would be forced to act faster, simply to assure its six remaining members that it would have enough teams to survive into the future.

Yet its options at that point would be "extremely limited," commissioner Karl Benson said, due to departure deadlines in other leagues and rules governing teams moving up to the Football Bowl Subdivision. And inviting weaker teams now, just to fill out the roster amid a crisis, could deny the WAC the opportunity to add stronger programs later, should they become available.

"You wouldn't want to do something knee-jerk and then back yourself into a corner and you can't get out," Benson said.

Just the same, the WAC can't waste any time in seeking out new members. The league will have to issue invitations before next summer, just to line up teams for the 2012-13 season.

So it's trying to "balance the timeline," as Benson put it, and be prepared in case strong replacement candidates become available in the coming months. Its membership committee has been examining prospective new members while holding discussions over the phone, and plans a Sept. 28 meeting in Dallas.

Winning its lawsuit and knowing that Fresno and Nevada are committed through 2011-12 would relieve the pressure on the league, and allow it at least to see what develops before having to act.

"Conference realignment, nationwide, will continue to occur," said Bruce Van De Velde, the former Utah State athletic director who's now the athletic director at Louisiana Tech, last month. "I think everyone understands that. … Everything is in play."

Of course, there's no certainty that anything will change, after all the tumult of the summer.

But a lot still could.

The Big Ten Conference might yet expand further, for example, after poaching Nebraska from the Big 12 Conference. The Big 12 or the Mountain West might decide to grow, too, which also could help trigger a trickle down to benefit the WAC.

One possibility?

If the Big Ten were to expand by raiding the Big East Conference, the Big East might then look to stabilize itself by adding Memphis and Central Florida from Conference USA (though it already has invited Villanova to join).

And if the new-look Mountain West decides it wants to become a 12-team league, it might aim for two of the three Western teams in Conference USA — Houston, UTEP or Tulsa.

In that case, Conference USA will have been hit from both sides, leaving teams such as Southern Methodist, Rice, and Houston, UTEP or Tulsa as potential targets for the WAC.

The possibility of which is why Barnes and others don't want to move too hastily, so they can "leave some room for additional players" down the line, just in case they're right and more dominoes fall.

"Certainly, it's up to us to stabilize our current situation," Barnes said. But "I see this as an opportunity for the WAC to secure itself for the short term, and also cast a vision toward the long term."

mcl@sltrib.com