| dbo:abstract
|
- The Western Athletic Conference (WAC) sponsored football and crowned a champion every year from 1962 to 2012. Once considered one of the best conferences in college football, steady attrition from 1999 to 2012 forced the WAC to drop football after fifty-one years. On January 14, 2021, the WAC announced its intention to reinstate football as a conference-sponsored sport at the NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) level, as well as the addition of five new members to the conference in all sports, including football. The new members announced include: Abilene Christian University, Lamar University, Sam Houston State University, and Stephen F. Austin State University, all currently of the Southland Conference, along with Southern Utah University, currently of the Big Sky Conference. Original plans were for all new members to join in July 2022, but after the Southland Conference expelled its departing members, the WAC moved the arrival of those four schools and the relaunch of football to July 2021. Southern Utah's entry remains on the 2022 schedule. The WAC football league will also include Dixie State University and Tarleton State University, both of which played as FCS independents in 2020–21 after having moved from NCAA Division II to the WAC for non-football sports in July 2020. The conference also announced that it will most likely add another football-playing institution at a later date. The conference has been speculated to move back up to the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) in the future following the reestablishment of the football conference at the FCS level. On the same day, news broke that The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV), a non-football playing member of the conference, had committed to create an FCS football program by 2024. The program would most likely compete as part of the newly-reinstated WAC football conference. For at least its first season in 2021, the relaunched WAC football league will be branded as the ASUN–WAC (or WAC–ASUN) Challenge, with the WAC establishing a temporary football partnership with the ASUN Conference. The ASUN plans to start its own FCS football league, but not until at least 2022. Under the partnership, three FCS programs that are joining the ASUN in July 2021 will play alongside current WAC members. (en)
|
