Whatever Happened to This Conference?? - The Western Athletic Conference aka The WAC.

Conference realignment is seemingly never going away in college football and it has become a topic of constant conversation. Due to this uncertainty, we started to wonder what happened to conferences in college football’s past and how they fell out of the picture. We will take a brief tour of some defunct/renamed conferences, explore their members, give a brief summary on how the conference fell apart and where everyone wound up after the conference disbanded.  

This one will be a bit different format wise since this conference is back in some form trying to get back to it’s football days albeit with some eclectic members. I will try to wrangle this up and summarize the best I can but just from many hours researching this one, this is going to be a wild ride and I hope to keep all the pieces together.

The Western Athletic Conference

The WAC formed out of a series of talks between Brigham Young University athletic director Eddie Kimball and other university administrators from 1958 to 1961 to form a new athletic conference that would better fit the needs and situations of certain universities which were at the time members of the Border (Border Conference Post), Skyline (Skyline Conference Post), and Pacific Coast Conferences (Pacific Coast Conference Post). (I linked our substacks on the three conferences mentioned here because they seem to all be sort of the building blocks to the original WAC)

The WAC potential member universities who were represented at the meetings included BYU, Washington State, Oregon, Oregon State, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Arizona State, and Wyoming.

Washington State, Oregon and Oregon State schools elected to stay in a revamped Pac-8 Conference that replaced the scandal-plagued PCC.

The Border and Skyline conferences, having each lost three of their stronger members, dissolved at the end of the 1961–62 season.

The charter members of the WAC were Arizona, Arizona State, BYU, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. (New Mexico State and Utah State applied for charter membership and were turned down; they would eventually become WAC members a scant 43 years later.)

The WAC Timeline

This timeline will go from normal conference activity to progressively more and more insane. I’m going to try to keep it together here.

Colorado State and Texas-El Paso (UTEP), at that time just renamed from Texas Western College, were accepted into the WAC in September 1967 (joined in July 1968) to bring membership up to eight.

With massive growth in the state of Arizona, the balance of WAC play in the 1970s became increasingly skewed in favor of the Arizona schools, who won or tied for all but two WAC football titles from 1969 onward. In the summer of 1978, the Arizona and Arizona State left the WAC for the Pac-8, which became the Pac-10. The WAC dropped down to 6 members.

One year later in 1979, the WAC added by San Diego State and the one year later they added Hawaii.

The WAC further expanded by adding Air Force in the summer of 1980 bringing the total of the WAC to 9 teams. A college football national championship won by BYU in 1984 added to the WAC's reputation.

This nine-team line-up of Air Force, BYU, Colorado State, Hawaii, New Mexico, San Diego State, Utah, UTEP and Wyoming defined the WAC for nearly 15 years but of course more expansion was to come.

Fresno State expanded its athletic programs in the early 1990s and was granted membership to the WAC in 1992. This was about the time that being independent in football was seen as a bad thing and a nationwide trend of major college programs avoiding independence took place with nearly everyone trying to find a conference home. This brought WAC membership to 10 teams.

In 1996, the WAC expanded again, adding six schools to its ranks for a total of 16. That’s right the WAC was the modern super conference with 16 teams. Rice, TCU, and SMU joined the league from the Southwest Conference, which had disbanded. Big West Conference members San Jose State and UNLV were also admitted, as well as Tulsa from the Missouri Valley Conference. It seems pretty insane that a conference of 10 teams would basically add 6 new teams in one year.

This led to some interesting divisions with 16 teams. The Pacific Division in 1996-97 was be made up of Air Force, Colorado State, Fresno State, Hawaii, UNLV, San Diego State, San Jose State and Wyoming. In the Mountain Division will be Brigham Young, New Mexico, Rice, Southern Methodist, Texas Christian, Texas-El Paso, Tulsa and Utah.

This was the height of the WAC member wise. This arrangement of 16 teams in the WAC, lasted about 2 years and the next years after 1998 are a combination of expansion and defection. We will continue that story below in another section. However, we will list some of these schools who won WAC Conference Titles in the Championship section.

Total WAC Football Championships 

• BYU - 19

• Boise State - 8

• Arizona State - 7

• Wyoming - 7

• Hawaii - 4

• Air Force - 3

• Fresno State - 3

• Colorado State - 3

• Arizona - 2

• Louisiana Tech - 2

• Nevada - 2

• New Mexico - 2

• TCU* - 2

• Utah - 2

• San Diego State - 1

• UTEP - 1

• Utah State* - 1

• Idaho* - 0

• UNLV* - 0

• New Mexico State* - 0

• Rice* - 0

• San Jose State - 0

• SMU* - 0

• UTSA* - 0

• Texas State* - 0

• Tulsa* - 0

(* denotes in conference for less than 8 years)

The WAC Empire begins it’s decline.

In 1998, the presidents of Air Force, BYU, Colorado State, Utah, and Wyoming met at Denver International Airport and agreed to split off to form a new league. Just like that the WAC’s membership dropped from 16 down to 11 in one airport meeting. But wait there was more. The breakaway group invited old-line WAC schools New Mexico and San Diego State, and newcomer UNLV to join them in the new Mountain West Conference, which began competition in 1999. The WAC dropped down to 8 members. Half of it’s membership just gone in basically just one swoop.

The concerns centered around finances, as the expanded league stretched approximately 3,900 miles from Hawaii to Oklahoma and covered nine states and four time zones. With such a far-flung league, travel costs became a concern with these relatively smaller schools.

In 2000, the WAC struck back by adding the Wolfpack of the University of Nevada, Reno aka Nevada and attempted to solidify its footing.

But a year later, TCU left for Conference USA in 2001 (it would later leave C-USA to become the ninth member of the Mountain West in 2005, and joined the Big 12 in 2012).

Another conference, the Big West announced that it would drop football after the 2000 season, but four of its football-playing members (Boise State, Idaho, New Mexico State, and Utah State) were unwilling to drop football.

Boise State was invited to join the WAC and promptly departed the Big West for the WAC in 2001. At the same time, Louisiana Tech ended its independent Div. I-A status and also accepted an invitation to join the WAC with Boise State. The WAC was back up to 10 teams.

While New Mexico State and Idaho joined the Sun Belt Conference (yes this really happened) and Utah State operated as an independent program.

(Please try to stay with me here as I may get lost too.)

In 2005, Conference USA sought new members to replenish its ranks after losing members to the Big East, which had lost members to the ACC. (What a sentence). Four WAC schools, former SWC schools Rice and SMU, as well as Tulsa and UTEP, joined Conference USA. This dropped the WAC down to 6 teams. However, in response, the WAC added Idaho, New Mexico State, and Utah State to get back up to 9 teams.

The WAC somehow always seemed to have counter to react to teams leaving. Lose 8 teams? No big deal, we will add Nevada and be fine. So what TCU left, who cares, we will add Boise State and La Tech. Lose 4 schools to C-USA, whatever, we will add 3 schools right back. However, it seemed their football days were coming closer and closer to an end. How much longer could they keep this up?

The WAC withered away by realignment

The 2010s began with a series of conference realignment moves that would have trickle-down conference effects changing the landscape of Division I football for good. And of course it profoundly changed the membership of the WAC forever.

Basically the WAC flagship, Boise State decided to move to the Mountain West Conference for the 2011–12 season, and to replace departing BYU, the MWC also recruited WAC members Fresno State and Nevada for 2012–13 season. The WAC was in scramble mode again. WAC commissioner Karl Benson courted several schools to replace those leaving, including the University of Montana. Montana declined the WAC invite. The University of Denver accepted associate conference WAC membership as they didn’t have a football team. The WAC was able to get two Texas schools to join for 2012. University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) new football program accepted WAC membership and just recently making the jump from FCS, Texas State University joined them.

The resulting eastward shift of the conference's geographic center led Hawaii to reduce travel expenses by becoming a football-only member of the MWC and joining the California-based Big West Conference for all other sports. The WAC ran out of football schools to add to the conference and was down to 7 football members.

The WAC began to invite non football schools to the conference. The WAC to invited Seattle University and the University of Texas at Arlington. These changes meant that the conference would have 10 members for 2012–13 but with only seven of which sponsored football. The WAC Commissioner Benson announced that the WAC planned to add two additional football-playing members to begin competition in 2013.

A further boost came when Boise State decided to join the Big East in football, and return to the WAC in most other sports, as of the 2013–14 academic year. So by the end of 2011, the WAC seemed to have weathered the latest round of conference changes, and once again reinvented itself for the future.

Or so it seemed…

The Mayans stated the world would end in 2012, but maybe they meant it was about the demise of the WAC. 2012 brought forth a series of moves the WAC could not withstand. Utah State and San Jose State accepted offers to join the MWC. This dropped the WAC to only 5 football playing members.

Then four similar announcements followed. UTSA and Louisiana Tech jumping to Conference USA. Dropping the football members down to 3.

Then Texas State announced it was going to the Sun Belt along with UT Arlington as of 2013–14. The football members of the WAC were down to 2.

Boise State also canceled plans to rejoin the WAC in its other sports, instead opting to place its non-football sports in the Big West Conference, before eventually deciding to simply remain in the MWC.

The WAC's viability as a Division I football conference was in grave doubt and ultimately was on life support. The two remaining football-playing members pulled the plug on WAC football. New Mexico State and Idaho, began making plans to compete in future seasons as FBS Independents; they ultimately spent only the 2013 season as independents, rejoining their one-time football home of the Sun Belt as football-only members in 2014.

The WAC Division I football conference was no more…

Return of the WAC??? (Once Again)

I won’t go into too much detail here as this post is long enough already, but due to losing the majority of its football-playing members, the WAC would stop sponsoring the sport after the 2012–13 season, thereby becoming a non-football conference but the WAC remained alive in other sports.

On January 14, 2021, the WAC announced its intention to reinstate football as a conference-sponsored sport at the FCS level, as well as the addition of five new members to the conference in all sports.

The WAC's planned reestablishment of a football conference at the FCS level has also been accompanied by speculation that the conference intends to eventually move its football league back up to FBS in the future, possibly by 2030…