RIP WAC football

The Midwestern drought has struck The Quiet Man this week so I thought I would pull a skeleton out of my blogging closet: conference realignment.

This is mostly inspired by the sad news that this is likely the last season of WAC football.

Once the original, sixteen-team super conference in the late-nineties, the WAC will be reduced to just two football schools next year, prompting the conference’s administrative brass to basically say the days of WAC football are over. (I do not think they have said it, yet, but the writing is on the wall.) Boise State jumped in 2010 and now the conference is losing eight other teams. The only football schools left for next year will be Idaho (a school that has a long losing streak to FCS rival Montana) and New Mexico State. Both are contemplating independence or jumps to other conferences, at least regarding their football programs.

The WAC may not even survive as a non-football conference. Why do I care? Why did I find this so saddening? A lot of it had to do with the fact I have built NCAA Football dynasties with New Mexico State and San Jose State. I have come to know the WAC well — or at least what it was. This year, only seven teams are competing for the conference crown, and they include Texas State and the University of Texas at San Antonio — two former-FCS teams that are not included in my most recent copy of NCAA. (UTSA started playing football in 2011.) That is how far the WAC has fallen. Nevada is gone. Fresno State is gone. Hawaii is gone. All jumped to the Mountain West this year and will be followed by San Jose State and Utah State next year. (Ironically, I made the jump to the Mountain West with San Jose State in my latest NCAA season. I dominated.) Even the conference commish jumped to the Sun Belt this year.

Needless to say, the raiding of the WAC represents how crazy and extreme conference expansion/realignment has become and how much the landscape of college athletics has shifted.