A little over a week ago, I went to the website of the Western Athletic Conference to finish up some statistical attendance numbers from this past athletic year. However, WACSports.com was redirected to UACSports.com and the site itself was redesigned.
The look was clean, but the colors were different and brighter. I like the more subtle look of the old site but do like the color scheme of the new one. It does reinforce several things that I had learned over the years but contradicts some persistent rumors that were false that just wouldn't go away. It also revealed some new information.
The first, and what I think is the most egregious persistent falsehood is the conference has not gone away, this is not a new conference. I've heard verbally and seen online that folks still think the WAC is now a defunct conference. The three holdover members of the WAC, Abilene Christian, Tarleton State and UT Arlington, have welcomed five former Atlantic Sun members and the Little Rock Trojans to the fold. It is no different than any other conference welcoming new members and saying goodbye to old ones.
On the new website, if you click on the records section, it goes to the old WAC site and an oops message. While the idea of bugs, dead links or other hiccups is totally unsurprising, a brand-new conference would have no need to provide a records section as of yet. That would not happen until the first athletic event at the minimum.
As for UTA, it unveiled a couple of other tidbits that I haven't seen anywhere as of yet.
Conference tournaments, meets and events have been mostly awarded. The only conference meet UTA will host is the women's tennis tournament. Despite the University Club of Arlington hosting the cross country meet, the host city is Richmond, Kentucky. Along with that, Eastern Kentucky will host the softball tourney as well. Abilene Christian is the only other multiple host school with women's golf and outdoor track. I was happy to see Little Rock's name as the host for the volleyball tournament. The Jack Stephens Center is a pretty good venue.
In an example of the cross over effect of the consortium, the indoor track meet is hosted by Bellarmine University in the Norton Sports Center in Louisville, Kentucky. I went to the ASUN website and saw that the cross country meet is at the same place as the UAC's meet is.
Additionally, I was intrigued by the baseball tourney. It has been at neutral sites since UTA joined. The neutral site in 2013 was in Grand Prairie while Mesa, Arizona hosted in the four years the Mavericks returned. But this coming athletic season will see campus sites host. I don't know if that means the regular season champion has the whole thing, if the better seed hosts the individual game (which is tough to do in a double elimination format) or if it is like the Southland Conference, where the top two seeds host, similar to a regional, and the winners of those two brackets meet at the better seed, similar to a super regional.
Finally, the basketball tournament site is not listed. I don't know if it is still in the works, if they are looking at a different way to conduct the event, seeking to join the ASUN in Jacksonville, Florida or something else entirely. I have little doubt getting that nailed down is a priority.
One thing I found interesting is that UTA is hosting the women's tennis tournament, but the WAC has both not listed men's tennis as a sport offered nor sought a postseason event. By my count there should be five UAC schools that offer the sport: the Mavs along with ACU, Austin Peay, EKU and North Alabama. UTA went to the dance with four in the WAC last year, so I'm not sure why the UAC isn't offering it. The ASUN currently has seven teams that will compete for a conference title. Two auto-bids sound better than one, so again, I'm not sure why.
If that doesn't change, it does make me a little upset, but just marginally. Up until last year, UTA had generally always had its sports in the same conference. In the 1960's and '70's, UTA was an independent in men's swimming and diving. However, that was common practice back then and there weren't as many conferences sponsoring that meet for a championship. There wasn't a push to get in a conference. Even today, only two-thirds of the DI conferences have a championship meet. And even then, some of them only have one or two schools. There are also two specialty conferences for the sport.
That is a long way of saying there's an asterisk for the one sport that UTA has had in its history that was not a member of its home conference. I would prefer the men's tennis team to be a part of the rest. It looks like it could on the surface. But as of now, it is the only program that will an affiliate member of the the ASUN.
Either way, it was nice to see the new website for the conference debuted. First event for UTA in the new conference comes when volleyball plays on August 28.
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