Breaking down the return of WAC Football

The WAC will bring back football for the first time in a decade after the addition of five new schools, four of which are Texas-based.

After fading into the abyss of lower-tier Division I football nine years ago, it’s an exciting moment to announce: the WAC football is back!

That’s right. The Western Athletic Conference, or WAC, is returning to the gridiron perhaps as soon as fall 2021. The league recently announced the planned additions of Abilene Christian, Lamar, Sam Houston State, Stephen F. Austin, and Southern Utah. These five schools, along with Tarleton State and Dixie State, will give the WAC seven participating members for football.

The league ceased competing in college football in 2012. Originally founded in 1962, the conference’s founding members included Utah, BYU, Wyoming, Arizona State, Arizona, and New Mexico, and has been quite a revolving door over the years. In the 1990s, the league spanned from Hawaii and San José State on the West Coast to Rice, Houston, and Tulsa in the Central Time Zone as a 16-team conference.

The conference’s football structure disintegrated in the early 2010s, with its members leaving for Conference USA (Louisiana Tech), the Big 12 (TCU), and the Mountain West (Fresno State and Nevada) amid national realignment moves throughout college football.

Its members currently compete in 19 men’s and women’s sports. Football will become the 20th sport. In the official plan, several schools (such as California Baptist, Utah Valley, and Seattle) will remain as non-football members.

Of course, remember that this is still the FCS level of Division I – so don’t expect the Abilene Christian football team to repeat the recent upset of its hoops squad against Texas anytime soon.

The Impact of WAC Football 

What’s the impact of the WAC’s college football reemergence, albeit this time at the FCS level?

First, the addition of a new football member could be a university putting on shoulder pads for the first time. With only seven football members, it’s natural that the WAC would look for an eighth or ninth addition. A notable example could be the UT-Rio Grande Valley Vaqueros, who launched a feasibility study to potentially take the field as soon as 2023 or 2024.

Or could it be a school like Grand Canyon University, located in Phoenix? The Antelopes have created a semi-sensation in the men’s basketball world, bringing several teams to the NCAA Tournament and pairing enthusiastic fans with competitive squads.

It’s a school of 25,000 students on campus in a major metropolitan area, Phoenix, and a football team would give its rising national profile a boost.

Second, you have to wonder if this is an increasingly Texas-based league that intends to emerge as a regional mid-tier football power that competes against the likes of Conference USA and the Sun Belt.

These conferences have several teams that call the Lone Star state home, such as C-USA’s UTEP and North Texas and the Sun Belt’s Texas State. It’s difficult to imagine WAC schools on even footing with bigger football programs like Houston of the American Athletic Conference, but the same can’t be said about the Mean Green and the Bobcats.

Third, WAC football provides a springboard for new competitors on the Division I scene, Dixie State and Tarleton State. The Trailblazers and the Texans, respectively, are joining Division I from the Division II ranks. Dixie State, in St. George, Utah, formed its first football team in 2006. Tarleton State, about 70 miles southwest of Fort Worth in Stephenville, Tex., began to play in 1904.