College football’s longest active conference title droughts
By Zach Bigalke
Mountain West Conference
Longest Drought: San Jose State Spartans (Last title: 1991)
The Mountain West is a rather modern creation. Born in 1999 after the defection of eight longtime WAC members, the MWC has been one of the premier mid-major conferences since its formation. It offered the first BCS Buster when Utah won the 2005 Fiesta Bowl over Pitt. But the league has also seen its membership turn over as Utah and TCU made the leap to Power Five conferences and BYU went independent.
It is now the last available home for teams that have bounced around various mid-major western conferences that have existed over the years. One such team is San Jose State, which is the MWC member with the longest current championship drought. The Spartans won their last title in 1991, when they were a member of the Big West. That proved to be the end of a 17-year stretch beginning in 1975 where San Jose State won eight PCAA/Big West titles.
The Spartans finished second in the Big West standings the following year, and have struggled to approach that level ever since. After moving to the WAC in 1994, San Jose State would not finish second again until their final season in the WAC in 2012. Once that conference dissolved its football sponsorship, the Spartans have failed to finish above .500 in any of the past five years.
Honorable Mentions
- Wyoming Cowboys: Last year the Cowboys played San Diego State for the Mountain West championship. That appearance came twenty years after Wyoming played BYU in the inaugural version of the short-lived WAC championship game. They haven’t celebrated a football championship in Laramie since the 1993 WAC title.
- UNLV Rebels: The Rebels can celebrate the fact that the relocation of the Raiders to Las Vegas will provide a new space for the college program to play. Perhaps titles, which have been nonexistent since UNLV shared the WAC championship in 1994, will follow with the move.