2026 Schedule Detective

For those new to the blog or who need a reminder, in the summer, I try to piece together the upcoming basketball schedules from various sources. It usually is a combination of Rocco Miller on X, looking at certain team's releases and conference release of UT Arlington's current home. 

This year has been really quiet in that regard. I have yet to see UTA on anyone else's schedule. No guarantee games at a larger school, no certified home and home releases. I can speculate on who is a second game from a previous home-and-home, but like Oral Roberts showed, there was a year between the two games contract so nothing is set in stone.

With that said, the only official release I have is from the United Athletic Conference. This week, they released the conference slate and the former Western Athletic Conference turned UAC is doing away with what they have done the last few years. 

And I'm on board with it.

A Hint of Things to Come

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.

New(ish) Conference Rivals

The news has been out for several weeks now, so this is more a reactionary post. Rumors were that a couple of other schools would be following the lone announcement, but since the October 10th news only the Little Rock Trojans are officially set to become the ninth member of the soon-to-be United Athletic Conference. I won't wait any longer and truth be told, the Trojans are worthy of their own entry.

This will only be a post to offer my perspective and some points. The first being, I wonder if there should be concern that rumors were swirling of three schools, but only one has made the commitment. Either way, I've alluded to this before, but I'm happy to share the conference distribution with fewer schools.

Second, it was very good to see a conference that the UT Arlington Athletic Department is a part of expand with a member school that is an existing member of Division I. For the Western Athletic Conference in its current geographic footprint to expand, the infill likely would have been Division II schools transitioning to DI. California Baptist, Grand Canyon, Tarleton State and Utah Tech all followed that pattern. While there have been some successes at these schools to varying degrees, I want all schools to have their sports programs compete now and who have a history of competing.

Conversation with an AD Part One - the UAC Rebrand

While I don't want the purpose of this blog to vary from its core, opinions and commentary on various aspects of the UT Arlington Mavericks Athletic Department, I have been contemplating in recent years how to do a little more, take it to the next level if you will. I attempted what follows last year, but obviously it didn't work, likely due to user error. I took a different approach, shook a few more hands and viola. 

On Friday afternoon, I had the genuine pleasure of a sit-down question and answer session "on the record" with the Athletic Director at UT Arlington, Jon Fagg. While I intended to make the interview a singular blog post, he allowed me to keep going. My thought process was if he offered 30 minutes, I was going to take 31. However, he let me go for over an hour and a half. As such, I really have to break it down into multiple parts. 

While I picked his brain about quite a bit of items, the drive home was filled with internal questions about things I should have followed up on more than I did, it was only natural. I did hit a lot of main points though. There is quite a bit of information in the conversation.

With that said, the Maverick Rambler presents its one-on-one with the AD.

UAC Find

Any time a university changes its conference affiliation, it creates headlines and is a hot topic. It creates conversations on a national scale where people who wouldn't mention a school are now discussing the changes. Some even try to present themselves as experts, though they knew little about the situation or school prior.

UTA, along with the remaining members of the Western Athletic Conference, certainly qualify as they and the members of the Atlantic Sun reorganized 15 schools into two conferences. The members of the two entities rarely garner much national attention so to hear all of these "experts" know the ins and outs of Tarleton State and Bellarmine make me chuckle.

However, I did find the following video on the WAC message board from the Big Mountain Podcast on the WAC being re-branded to the United Athletic Conference and the reorg with thew ASun. The Big Mountain guys tend to focus on all conferences in the western end of the U.S. and have more knowledge than the average folks.

A New Coat of Paint

There was big news from both a UT Arlington perspective and conference affiliation shuffling that came out this week. As has been the case for its entire history, the Western Athletic Conference will survive, despite the handwringing from the media and social media circles.

What was known prior to this week was Seattle University and Grand Canyon were out of the conference at the end of this month. Common belief among the remaining WAC members was good riddance to the second. That left seven schools, Abilene Christian, California Baptist, Southern Utah, Tarleton State, Utah Tech, Utah Valley along with UTA, for the upcoming athletic year. Seven is the minimum for an automatic berth into the men's basketball tournament.

California Baptist accepted an invitation from the Big West Conference several months ago and Utah Valley formally did the same last month. That would leave only five members for the 2026/27 athletic year. With limited options in the footprint, schools bailing for competitively weaker conferences and no Division II schools ready to move, people were predicting the WAC's demise.