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RIP WAC

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It looks like the WAC may be on its last legs as a conference.

There are eight current members. Nevada and Fresno State are following Boise State to the Mountain West for next season. Hawaii is for football, as well, while joining the Big West in hoops. Utah State and San Jose State will be joining up with the MWC in 2013. Louisiana Tech will be joining UT-San Antonio, Florida International and North Texas in Conference USA.

And now, the new members brought in to replace the schools that are leaving -- Texas State and UT-Arlington -- have decided to leave the WAC before they ever even joined the WAC. Both schools will become members of the Sun Belt in 2013.

The leaves Idaho, New Mexico State and ... well ... no one else.

That’s it.

Two schools. As Brett McMurphy describes it,
this may very well be the end of the WAC as we know it:

The WAC has been mostly a temporary stop over than a long-term home for schools. And that’s unfortunate.

Don’t blame former commissioner Karl Benson or Hurd, who recently took over for Benson and has been in charge of putting out multiple five-alarm fires with a leaky squirt gun. The WAC certainly didn’t start the fire. It was Jim Delany’s cow in Chicago that kicked over the lantern that started the country’s conference realignment inferno.

After that it was a hundred reactionary moves from other conference commissioners, shoring up their ranks, while scorching college football’s landscape. The other 10 conferences may have had some hardships, but they will all survive. It’s the WAC that got burned to a crisp.


If the WAC disintegrates, does this open up another at-large bid?

Rob Dauster is the editor of the college basketball website Ballin’ is a Habit. You can find him on twitter @robdauster.