Western Athletic Conference

The Western Athletic Conference (WAC) is an NCAA Division I conference founded in 1962. It will operate as the United Athletic Conference (UAC) beginning in July 2026. A total of 43 institutions have been full members of the WAC, with membership spanning 15 states in the western United States. In the 2025–26 academic year, the final season using the Western Athletic Conference name, the conference includes three members in Texas, three in Utah, and one in California.

For the first 41 years of its existence, the WAC competed at the highest level of college athletics across all sports. The conference expanded from its original six members to a peak of 16 in 1996, before seven of its institutions (including the four remaining charter members) seceded in 1998 to form the Mountain West Conference. Thereafter the WAC struggled to maintain a top-level football conference and ultimately discontinued the sport after the 2012–13 season, leaving the NCAA's Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly known as Division I-A) to become a Division I non-football conference. After a major expansion in 2021, the WAC reinstated football, competing in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). Further membership losses soon foiled plans to someday return to the FBS level, and in 2023 the WAC again became a non-football conference, with its football-playing members joining the football schools of the Atlantic Sun Conference (ASUN) to form the football-only United Athletic Conference (UAC).

The WAC will officially rebrand as the United Athletic Conference on July 1, 2026, and become an all-sports conference including the three remaining members of the WAC (Abilene Christian University, Tarleton State University, and non-football University of Texas at Arlington), the five members of the ASUN that play football in the UAC (Austin Peay State University, University of Central Arkansas, Eastern Kentucky University, University of North Alabama, and University of West Georgia), and the non-football University of Arkansas at Little Rock (athletically known as Little Rock) from the Ohio Valley Conference.