The WAC covers a broad expanse of the Western United States with member institutions located in Arizona, California, Texas, Utah and Washington.

Colorado State and Texas–El Paso (UTEP), at that time just renamed from Texas Western College, were accepted in September 1967 (joined in July 1968) to bring membership up to eight.

The scheduled fourth year of the alignment was abandoned after eight schools left to form the Mountain West Conference.

[citation needed] The division champions in football met from 1996 to 1998 in the WAC Championship Game, held at Sam Boyd Stadium (also known as the Silver Bowl) in the Las Vegas Valley.

Additional concerns centered around finances, as the expanded league stretched approximately 3,900 miles (6,300 km) from Hawaii to Oklahoma and covered nine states and four time zones.

The presidents of Air Force, BYU, Colorado State, Utah, and Wyoming met in 1998 at Denver International Airport and agreed to split off to form a new league.

The breakaway group invited old-line WAC schools New Mexico and San Diego State, and newcomer UNLV to join them in the new Mountain West Conference, which began competition in 1999.

"With Hawaii and the Texas schools separated by about 3,900 miles and four time zones, travel costs were a tremendous burden for WAC teams.

The costs, coupled with lagging revenue and a proposed realignment that would have separated rivals such as Colorado State and Air Force, created unrest among the eight defecting schools.

TCU left for Conference USA in 2001 (it would later leave C-USA to become the ninth member of the Mountain West in 2005, and joined the Big 12 in 2012).

The decade of the 2010s began with a series of conference realignment moves that would have trickle-down effects throughout Division I football, and profoundly change the membership of the WAC.

[40] A further boost came when Boise State decided to join the Big East in football, and return to the WAC in most other sports, as of the 2013–14 academic year.

[43][44][45][46][47][48] Boise State also canceled plans to rejoin the WAC, instead opting to place its non-football sports in the Big West Conference, before eventually deciding to simply remain in the MWC.

The two remaining football-playing members, New Mexico State and Idaho, began making plans to compete in future seasons as FBS Independents;[51][52] they ultimately spent only the 2013 season as independents, rejoining their one-time football home of the Sun Belt as football-only members in 2014.

[53] In order to rebuild, as well as forestall further defections, the conference was forced to add two schools—Utah Valley University and CSU Bakersfield—which were invited in October 2012 to join the WAC in 2013–14,[54] but this did not prevent two more members from leaving.

Denver decided to take most of its athletic teams to The Summit League as of the 2013–14 season,[55] shortly after Idaho opted to return all of its non-football sports to the Big Sky Conference in 2014–15.

Due to losing the majority of its football-playing members, the WAC would stop sponsoring the sport after the 2012–13 season, thereby becoming a non-football conference.

In January 2017, California Baptist University announced it would transition from NCAA Division II and join the WAC in 2018.

[62] In November 2017, Cal State Bakersfield announced it would accept an invitation to the Big West and join its new conference in 2020.

[3] During the aforementioned press conference, Hurd also announced that the WAC would split into two divisions for all sports except football and men's and women's basketball.

[2] Also on January 14, 2021, news broke that UTRGV, a non-football playing member of the conference, had committed to create an FCS football program by 2024.

The three schools were set to join the ASUN Conference in July 2021; that league planned to add FCS football, but not until at least 2022.

[76] No other universities in the region were added to the WAC, and UMKC (now known for athletic purposes as Kansas City) departed the conference in 2020 for its former home of the Summit League.

[83] ESPN reported on December 9, 2022, that the WAC and ASUN had agreed to form a new football-only conference that planned to start play in 2024.

[88] Two months later, in May 2024, both Grand Canyon and Seattle announced they had accepted invitations to join the West Coast Conference, beginning in the 2025-26 academic year.

GCU will join the Mountain West no later than July 1, 2026 The Western Athletic Conference currently sponsors championship competition in 9 men's and 10 women's NCAA-sanctioned sports.

On the same day, news broke that the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, a non-football playing WAC member, had committed to create an FCS football program by 2024.

Both the WAC and ASUN initially planned to have 6 playoff-eligible teams in 2022, but each lost such a member with the start of FBS transitions by Jacksonville State and Sam Houston.

The WAC has been speculated to move back up to FBS in the future following the reestablishment of the football conference at the FCS level.

In 2014–15, the WAC initiated a new digital network to give fans high quality streaming internet access to many of its regular season games and postseason championships including volleyball, soccer, swimming and diving, basketball, softball and baseball.