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Does wac conference have football12/26/2023 Games against these schools do not count in alliance standings, although games against full WAC members count in the separate WAC league table. Utah Tech and Tarleton are included in alliance scheduling, but because of their ongoing transitions from NCAA Division II to Division I are ineligible for the playoffs until the 2024 season. The WAC–ASUN Challenge consists of the seven teams that are eligible for the FCS playoffs. All are incoming members of the ASUN Conference, which plans to start an FCS football league in 2022. By the end of January 2021, three more schools were brought into WAC football for the 2021 fall season only. On the same day that WAC confirmed the return of football, full conference member UTRGV announced that it would start an FCS football program no later than 2024. Before the reinstatement of football was officially announced, media reports indicated that the WAC might add two more schools to join the conference for football. The WAC resumed play in the 2021 fall season with 9 members. The WAC has 27 former football-playing members. The merged conference will play a six-game schedule in 2023 before adopting a full round-robin in 2024. UTRGV, which put off the start of its football program to 2025, will join at that time. The ASUN is contributing Austin Peay, Central Arkansas, Eastern Kentucky, and North Alabama to the new league, with the WAC contributing Abilene Christian, Southern Utah, Stephen F. On December 20, 2022, the ASUN and WAC jointly announced that they would fully merge their football conferences effective with the 2023 season under the tentative name of ASUN–WAC Football Conference. The 2022 season proved to be the last for the WAC as a standalone football conference. The WAC's playoff-eligible membership soon dropped further to 3, after Incarnate Word backed out of its planned move from the SLC to the WAC and Lamar, which had announced it would leave the WAC in 2023 to return to the SLC, accelerated this move to 2022. The ASUN–WAC partnership was renewed for the 2022 season after the start of FBS transitions by ASUN member Jacksonville State and WAC member Sam Houston rendered both ineligible for the FCS playoffs, also dropping both conferences below the 6 football members needed to qualify for an automatic berth in the FCS playoffs. Under the partnership, three FCS programs that joined the ASUN in July 2021 played alongside current WAC members. The ASUN eventually started its own FCS football league in 2022. At the time, the program would most likely have competed as part of the newly-reinstated WAC football conference.įor its first two planned seasons in 20, the relaunched WAC football league was branded as the ASUN–WAC (or WAC–ASUN) Challenge, with the WAC establishing a temporary football partnership with the ASUN Conference. 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 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. The conference also announced that it will most likely add another football-playing institution at a later date. The WAC football league also included Dixie State University (renamed Utah Tech University in 2022) 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. Southern Utah's entry remained on the 2022 schedule. Original plans were for all new members to join in July 2022, but after the SLC expelled its departing members, the WAC moved the arrival of those four schools and the relaunch of football to July 2021. Austin State University, all currently of the Southland Conference (SLC), along with Southern Utah University, currently of the Big Sky Conference. The new members announced include: Abilene Christian University, Lamar University, Sam Houston State University, and Stephen F. 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. 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. The Western Athletic Conference (WAC) sponsored football and crowned a champion every year from 1962 to 2012.
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