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Western Athletic Conference

The Western Athletic Conference (WAC) is an NCAA Division I conference. The WAC covers a broad expanse of the western United States with member institutions located in Arizona, California, Texas, Utah and Washington.

Due to most of the conference's football-playing members leaving the WAC for other affiliations, the conference discontinued football as a sponsored sport after the 2012–13 season, left the NCAA's Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly known as Division I-A) and became one of the NCAA's eleven Division I non-football conferences.[1] The WAC thus became the first Division I conference to drop football since the Big West in 2000. The WAC then added men's soccer. The WAC underwent a major expansion on July 1, 2021, with four schools joining. The conference reinstated football at that time, competing in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). One year later, on July 1, 2022, one FCS football school (Lamar) and one non-football school (Chicago State) left, and one FCS football school (Southern Utah) and one non-football school (UT Arlington) joined.[2][3][4][5][6] The WAC again became a non-football conference in 2023, when the WAC and the Atlantic Sun Conference (ASUN) merged their FCS football leagues as the United Athletic Conference.

Members

Existing full members

These institutions are the existing full members of the Western Athletic Conference:

  Members departing for the West Coast Conference in 2025.

Notes
  1. ^ Includes online students. On-campus enrollment is about 25,300.
  2. ^ UT Arlington was a full but non-football member in 2012–13 before rejoining the conference in 2022–23.
  3. ^ In May 2022, Dixie State University's name transitioned to "Utah Tech University".[14]


Affiliate members

These nine schools field programs in the WAC for sports not sponsored by their primary conferences:

Notes
  1. ^ a b c Four schools became affiliate members in men's soccer in July 2013; the WAC announced on January 9, 2013 that it would reinstate the sport, which it had sponsored from 1996 to 1999. Because the conference previously dropped football, it was necessary to add a new men's team sport to maintain its Division I status. It chose men's soccer because three of the confirmed members for 2013–14 (CSU Bakersfield, Grand Canyon, and Seattle) already sponsored the sport, and filled out its soccer ranks by attracting four schools from the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation. Three of these schools have past WAC connections—former full members Air Force, UNLV, and San Jose State.[15] After the WAC announced it would add men's soccer, the conference gained an eighth soccer school for the 2013 season when UMKC, which already sponsored the sport, joined. In addition, Utah Valley added the sport for 2014, UT-Pan American (later known as UT Rio Grande Valley) added it for 2015, and Chicago State was slated to add it for 2016 but did not do so until 2020 (by which time UMKC returned to the Summit League under its athletic identity of Kansas City).
  2. ^ a b c Four schools (three of which are former WAC full members: Air Force, UNLV, and Wyoming; and North Dakota) became affiliate members in men's swimming and diving in July 2013; the WAC announced on May 16, 2013 that it would reinstate the sport, which it had sponsored from 1962 to 2000.[16]
  3. ^ Virtually all of the Academy grounds, including the cadet area and all athletic facilities, is outside the Colorado Springs city limits. The U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Postal Service respectively designate the Academy as "Air Force Academy" and "USAF Academy".
  4. ^ Sacramento State was formerly an associate member of the WAC in baseball from 1992–93 to 1995–96.
  5. ^ The UNLV campus is outside of the Las Vegas city limits in the unincorporated community of Paradise. The U.S. Postal Service considers all unincorporated areas in the Las Vegas Valley, including Paradise, to have a Las Vegas address.
  6. ^ Northern Colorado joined the WAC for baseball for the 2014 spring season (2013–14 school year).[18] The baseball team left for the Summit League after the 2021 spring season (2020–21 school year);[19] but the school remains a WAC affiliate in women's swimming & diving.
  7. ^ While UTRGV was formally founded in 2013, with instruction starting in 2015, the athletic program traces its history through the University of Texas–Pan American (UTPA), which joined the WAC in 2013 and was one of the two institutions merged into UTRGV. The UTRGV athletic program inherited UTPA's Division I and WAC memberships.

Former full members

The WAC has 34 former full members: