r/fcs•3 yr. ago

Get to know the FCS: The United Athletic Conference (UAC)

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United Athletic Conference AKA AQ7, ASUN-WAC Challenge/WAC-ASUN Challenge

Formed: 2021 (Unofficially), 2023 (Officially)

Commissioner: Oliver Luck

Headquarters: Atlanta, GA (ASUN)/Arlington, TX (WAC)

History

On January 14th 2021, the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) announced their intentions to bring back football at the FCS level, nine years after pulling the plug on the FBS version. To do this, the WAC brought in five schools to join current members Tarleton State and Dixie State (now Utah Tech). These schools were Abilene Christian, Lamar, Sam Houston State and Stephen F. Austin (known as the 'Texas Four') from the Southland Conference and Southern Utah from the Big Sky Conference. Originally, all five schools would join in 2022, but the Southland gave the 'Texas Four' the proverbial boot from the conference, forcing them to join the WAC a year ahead of schedule.

On that same day, the University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) announced that they would introduce a football program that would start in 2024, but has been pushed back to 2025.

Two weeks later, on January 29th 2021, the Atlantic Sun Conference (ASUN) announced that they would have football as well with the additions of Central Arkansas, Eastern Kentucky and Jacksonville State alongside current members Kennesaw State and North Alabama. The plan was to start football in 2022, so the three ASUN schools would join up with the WAC to create the ASUN-WAC Challenge for that season while the other two schools would finish their commitment to the Big South.

As soon as the plan was announced, monkey wrenches would be thrown in the form of Conference USA. They would add Jacksonville State and Sam Houston State (alongside Liberty, a current ASUN member but an FBS Independent in football and New Mexico State, a current WAC member but also an FBS Independent in football) to help stop the bleeding from losing six schools to the American. This meant that the plan for the ASUN to have football on its own would be halted for the time being. This also meant that the two conferences would re-up their alliance for the 2022 season, with the extra addition of Austin Peay for the ASUN side.

While the ASUN was dealing with that, the WAC made their own moves to shore up their side of the alliance by adding Incarnate Word (UIW). But, there was trouble brewing: Lamar, having been abysmal in their lone season in the WAC, made the decision to retreat back to the Southland Conference. Seeing their fellow Cardinal return to the flock gave UIW the same feeling and right before the sport season calendar would change, UIW backed out of the move to the WAC and stayed in the Southland.

In December of 2022, news came out that the ASUN and the WAC would form a football only conference that would have six schools from the WAC (Abilene Christian, Southern Utah, Stephen F. Austin, Tarleton State, Utah Tech and future member UTRGV) and four schools from the ASUN (Austin Peay, Central Arkansas, Eastern Kentucky and North Alabama) with the hope to begin play in 2024 and aim for the FBS level. A week after that announcement, an official announcement came in as the new league would begin play in 2023 as the ASUN-WAC Football Conference and would have a six game conference schedule for this season before having a full eight game round robin in 2024. The plan to aim for the FBS level wasn't mentioned in the announcement.

A month later, the alliance would name Oliver Luck as their executive director and in April, the official name of the alliance was announced: The United Athletic Conference.

If the UAC name sounds familiar to you, it was the planned name for the final form from the aborted plan that the ASUN and the Coastal Collegiate Sports Association (CCSA) had planned in 2020. The plan was for the ASUN to expand to 20 members, give the name and rights to the ASUN to the CCSA, then the seven core members would join the newly re-dubbed ASUN while the new members would form the UAC. The plan was aborted in November 2020 thanks in large part to the COVID-19 Pandemic and losing one of the core members in the plan, NJIT, to America East.

Current Members

Former Members

There are four former members of the ASUN-WAC Challenge. Three of them have moved up to the FBS level and one (Lamar) flew back to the Southland. This list does not include Incarnate Word since they never officially joined the WAC. It also does not include Liberty or New Mexico State as they are current FBS members.

National Championships

While the UAC doesn't have any national championships under their belt, per se, one of their conference members (Eastern Kentucky) has won two national championships

EKU Eastern Kentucky - 1979 and 1982

Posted Aug 17, 2023, 1:48 PM UTC

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