The WAC is back - new FCS conference is forming

[ISUBU]

It has been rumored for a while, but now it is confirmed that the Western Athletic Conference will be sponsoring FCS football in 2022.

There will initially be seven teams: current independents and FCS newcomers Dixie State (Utah) and Tarleton State (Texas), Southern Utah from the Big Sky, and four teams from the Southland, Abilene Christian, Lamar, Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin. I don't know how soon they'll receive an automatic bid to the playoffs, but they will eventually get one.

Sam Houston has had a lot of success over the past decade or so, and Southern Utah and SFA are longtime FCS teams who have reached the playoffs more than once.

With this group of schools from Utah and Texas, you'd imagine that Northern Arizona might be a target. Weber State has also been mentioned. As it looks now, most of these schools will have a better path to enough wins to be considered for an at large bid than they have in their current conferences. It will also reduce the Southland to just 7 teams, meaning those remaining schools will likely be looking at 5 or 6 nonconference games each year. Perhaps we'll see some of these schools on our future schedules, although it is surprising how few games we've had with the longtime FCS level teams.

 

[StLRedbird]

Thanks for that ISUBU.

So, the WAC and Big West were DI-A football conferences. The BW dropped down to DI-AA. The WAC eventually dropped conference football when it couldn't support DI-A membership numbers for that. It remained classified as a DI-A conference, but with no football. Eventually, it was an FBS conference, but with no football. The WAC is re-classifying as a FCS conference and again sponsoring football, right?

 

[ISUBU]

Yes and no.

In the old days the WAC was the home of teams including BYU, Wyoming, Utah, etc. That traditional grouping blew up in conference realignment.

The WAC currently exists with an unusual mix of schools including the train wreck that is Chicago State. It looks like the conference for teams that don't belong anywhere else. And they aren't sponsoring football currently.

They are announcing that they will begin sponsoring FCS football for those 7 schools, with the dream of moving to FBS within a decade. But I've also seen suggestions that they might become a cross divisional conference, as New Mexico State is struggling as an independent. This isn't entirely unprecedented, as the old MVC had teams at both I-A and I-AA years ago. This is just more evidence that the bottom of the FBS looks more like the top of FCS than the top of FBS.