Western Athletic Conference The Western Athletic Conference ( WAC ) is an American collegiate athletic conference , which was formed on July 27 , 1962 , making it the sixth oldest of the 11 college athletic conferences currently participating in the NCAA ' s Division I FBS ( formerly Division I - A ) . In football , the WAC is a non - automatic qualifier member of the Bowl Championship Series ( BCS ) selection system . The WAC covers a broad expanse of the western United States , with member institutions located in California , Colorado , Idaho , New Mexico , Utah , and Washington , plus the " non - western " states of Louisiana and Texas ( traditionally associated with the South ) . Many long - standing members left to form the Mountain West Conference or to join Conference USA . Three additional former members have moved on to the Pacific - 12 Conference . Due to various members leaving the WAC , the conference will drop football as a sponsored sport after the 2012 - 13 season , therefore becoming a non - football conference . Member schools . Current members . The following institutions are the ten full members of the WAC for the 2012 – 2013 academic year . Pink denotes schools that will be departing on July 1 , 2013 . Yellow denotes a school that will be departing on July 1 , 2014 . Seven current members will leave the WAC on July 1 , 2013 : One current member will leave the WAC on July 1 , 2014 : Future members . Six new members will join the WAC on July 1 , 2013 : Affiliate members . The following eight schools field programs in the WAC for sports not sponsored by their primary conferences . Former members . The WAC has 19 former members . Membership timeline . ‡ In football , BYU is currently competing and Idaho will compete as NCAA Division I FBS independent schools . ∗ In football , Hawai ' i currently competes in the Mountain West Conference . History . Formation . 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 , Skyline , and Pacific Coast Conferences . Potential member universities who were represented at the meetings included BYU , Washington State , Oregon , Oregon State , Utah , New Mexico , Arizona , Arizona State , and Wyoming . While the three Washington and Oregon schools elected to stay in a revamped Pac - 8 Conference that replaced the scandal - plagued PCC , the remaining six schools formed the WAC , forcing the disbandment of the Border and Skyline conferences . 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 43 years later . Success and first expansion . The conference proved to be an almost perfect fit for the six schools from both a competitive and financial standpoint . Arizona and Arizona State , in particular , experienced success in baseball with Arizona garnering the 1963 College World Series ( CWS ) runner - up trophy and ASU winning the CWS in 1965 , 1967 , and 1969 . Colorado State and Texas - El Paso ( UTEP ) , at that time just renamed from Texas Western College , joined in 1967 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 two schools left the WAC for the Pac - 8 , which became the Pac - 10 , and were replaced in the WAC by San Diego State and , one year later , Hawaii . The WAC further expanded by adding Air Force in the summer of 1980 . A college football national championship won by Brigham Young in 1984 added to the WAC ' s reputation as the best of the so - called mid - major conferences . This nine - team line - up of the WAC defined the conference for nearly 15 years . Second wave of expansion and turbulence . Fresno State expanded its athletic program in the early 1990s and was granted membership in 1992 as the nationwide trend against major college programs independent of conferences accelerated . The WAC merged with the High Country Athletic Conference , a parallel organization to the WAC for women ' s athletics , in 1990 to unify both men ' s and women ' s athletics under one administrative structure . In 1996 , the WAC expanded again , adding six schools to its ranks for a total of sixteen . 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 . Also , two WAC members for men ' s sports at the time , Air Force and Hawaii , brought their women ' s sports into the WAC . With the expansion , the WAC was divided into two divisions . To help in organizing schedules and travel for the farflung league , the members were divided into four quadrants of four teams each , as follows : Quadrant one was always part of the Pacific Division , and quadrant four was always part of the Mountain Division . Quadrant two was part of the Pacific Division for 1996 and 1997 before switching to the Mountain Division in 1998 , while the reverse was true for quadrant three . The scheduled fourth year of the alignment was abandoned after eight schools left to form the Mountain West Conference . The division champions in football met from 1996 to 1998 in a championship game at Sam Boyd Stadium ( also known as the Silver Bowl ) in Henderson , Nevada . Increasingly , this arrangement was not satisfactory to most of the older , pre - 1990 members . Five members in particular ( Air Force , BYU , Colorado State , Utah , and Wyoming ) felt that WAC expansion had compromised the athletic and academic excellence of the membership . Additional concerns centered around finances , as the new league stretched from Hawaii to Oklahoma and travel costs became a concern . In 1999 , those five schools , along with old line WAC schools New Mexico and San Diego State , as well as newcomer UNLV , split off and formed the new Mountain West Conference . A " USA Today " article sums up why the league broke up . " With Hawaii and the Texas schools separated by about 3 , 900 miles and four time zones , travel costs were a tremendous burden for WAC teams . The costs , coupled with lagging revenue and a proposed realignment that would have separated rivals such as Colorado State and Air Force , created unrest among the eight defecting schools . " WAC in the 2000s . In 2000 , the University of Nevada , Reno ( Nevada ) of the Big West conference joined as part of its plan to upgrade its athletic program . 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 ) . When the Big West announced that it would drop football after the 2000 season , four of its members ( Boise State , Idaho , New Mexico State , and Utah State ) wanted to continue their football programs . Boise State was invited to join the WAC and promptly departed the Big West , while New Mexico State and Idaho joined the Sun Belt Conference ( NMSU as a full member , Idaho as a " football only " member ) and Utah State operated as an independent D - IA program . At the same time , Louisiana Tech ( LA Tech ) ended its independent D - IA status and also accepted an invitation to join the WAC with Boise State . 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 . Four WAC schools , former SWC schools Rice and SMU , as well as Tulsa , and UTEP , joined Conference USA . In response , the WAC added Idaho , New Mexico State , and Utah State – all former Big West schools which left the conference in 2000 along with Boise State when that conference dropped football . The three new schools were all land grant universities , bringing the conference total to five ( Nevada and Hawaii ) . Membership changes and the elimination of football . The decade of the 2010s began with a series of conference realignment moves that would have trickle - down effects throughout Division I football , and profoundly change the membership of the WAC . Boise State decided to move to the Mountain West Conference ( MWC ) for the 2011 - 12 season , and to replace departing BYU , the MWC also recruited WAC members Fresno State and Nevada for 2012 - 13 . WAC commissioner Karl Benson courted several schools to replace those leaving , including the University of Montana , which declined , as well as the University of Denver , University of Texas at San Antonio and Texas State University - San Marcos , which all accepted effective 2012 - 13 . However , the resulting eastward shift of the conference ' s geographic center led the University of Hawaii at Mānoa to reduce travel expenses by joining the California - based Big West Conference ( which does not sponsor football ) and becoming a football - only member of the MWC . Further invitations were then issued by the WAC to Seattle University and the University of Texas at Arlington . These changes meant that the WAC would have 10 members for 2012 – 13 , and Benson announced that the WAC planned to add two additional football - playing members to begin play 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 . But from this seemingly strong position , early 2012 brought forth a series of moves that called the long - term viability of the conference into question . First Utah State and San Jose State accepted offers to join the MWC . Similar announcements followed , taking UTSA and Louisiana Tech to Conference USA , and Texas State and UT - Arlington to the Sun Belt Conference , all as of 2013 - 14 . Boise State also canceled plans to rejoin the WAC , instead opting to place its non - football sports in the Big West Conference . These changes left the WAC ' s viability as a Division I football conference in doubt , so the two remaining programs , New Mexico State and Idaho , started planning to compete in future seasons as FBS Independents . In order to rebuild , as well as forestall further defections , the conference was forced to add two schools - - Utah Valley University , CSU Bakersfield - - were invited in October 2012 to join the WAC in 2013 - 14 but this did not prevent two more members leaving . Idaho opted to return all of its non - football sports to the Big Sky Conference in 2014 - 15 while Denver took most of its athletic teams to The Summit League as of the 2013 - 14 season . The conference again reloaded by adding Grand Canyon University and Chicago State University , and extending an invitation to University of Texas - Pan American , which was accepted by approval of the UT System Board of Regents in mid - December . Then in February 2013 the WAC announced that University of Missouri – Kansas City would join in 2013 as well . These changes would put the membership of the conference in 2014 at eight members , of which only one , New Mexico State , had been a member of the conference just three years before . Due to the aforementioned departure of the majority of its football - playing members , the WAC will drop football as a sport after the 2012 - 13 season , thereby becoming a non - football conference . Sports . The Western Athletic Conference currently sponsors championship competition in seven men ' s and eleven women ' s NCAA sanctioned sports . Eight schools are currently Associate members in three sports . Football . " For the most recent season , see 2012 Western Athletic Conference football season " WAC champions Bowl games The lone WAC bowl game tie - in for the 2012 – 13 postseason was the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl . Bowl Championship Series The WAC champion received an automatic berth in one of the five BCS bowl games if they were the highest ranked non - automatic qualifying conference champion and either of the following : By qualifying under the first criterion above , the 2006 Boise State football team landed a berth in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl , and the 2007 Hawaii football team received a bid to play in the 2008 Sugar Bowl . In 2009 the Mountain West champion TCU received the automatic BCS bid by finishing higher than Boise State in the final BCS rankings ; however , the Broncos received an at - large BCS bid to the 2010 Fiesta Bowl . In three BCS bowl games , the WAC boasted a record of two wins and one loss . In addition to those three teams that played in BCS bowls , four other WAC teams qualified for a BCS berth but were not selected for a bid , including TCU in 2000 and Boise State in 2004 , 2008 , and 2010 . Rivalries Football rivalries involving WAC teams included : Men ' s basketball . WAC tournament Rivalries Men ' s basketball rivalries involving WAC teams include : Awards Women ' s basketball . WAC tournament Rivalries Women ' s basketball rivalries involving WAC teams include : Baseball . The WAC has claimed seven NCAA baseball national championships . The most recent WAC national champion is the 2008 Fresno State Bulldogs baseball team . WAC tournament Championships . Current WAC champions . Fall 2011 Winter 2012 Spring 2011 National championships . The following teams have won NCAA national championships while being a member of the WAC : The WAC has also produced one AP national champion in football : The following teams won AIAW ( and forerunner DGWS ) women ' s national championships while their universities were members of the WAC : The following current WAC teams have won NCAA national championships : Facilities . Note : Future members highlighted in gray . Members leaving highlighted in pink . Awards . Commissioner ' s Cup The WAC awards its Commissioner ' s Cup to the school that performs the best in each of the conference ' s 19 men ' s and women ' s championships . Joe Kearney Award Named in honor of former WAC commissioner Dr . Joseph Kearney , the awards are given annually to the top male and female WAC athlete . The various WAC member institutions Athletics Directors select the male award winner , while the WAC member instituitions Senior Women ' s Administrators choose the female honoree . Stan Bates Award The award is named in honor of former WAC Commissioner Stan Bates and honors the WAC ' s top male and female scholar - athletes , recognizing the recipients ’ athletic and academic accomplishments . In addition , the awards carry a $ 2 , 000 postgraduate scholarship . Media . WAC Sports Network . In 2010 , the WAC initiated the WAC Sports Network to increase television exposure throughout the conference ' s media market s . Football and basketball games were produced and distributed throughout the year . The network lasted two seasons and has ceased to operate , but it could be brought back if Learfield Sports , which operated the network , gains additional broadcast rights among new WAC teams . WAC . tv . WAC . tv is a subscription - based provider of live and on - demand online streaming video of WAC events .