Brad Rock: Demise of colorful WAC on BYU's, Utah's hands

That was too bad for the WAC. Previously the league had great road trips. Though Laramie wasn't exactly paradise, a Big 12 writer once noted that he'd never bad-mouth the WAC. Instead of Las Vegas, Honolulu and San Diego, he covered games in Ames, Stillwater and Lubbock.

But lately you had to ask: Who besides Karl Malone would want to spend the weekend in Rushton?

The main reason the WAC died, though, was because of Utah and BYU. If they had stayed in the conference instead of spearheading the formation of the Mountain West, the league likely would have survived. If Utah hadn't joined the Pac-12 and BYU gone independent, Fresno State and Nevada wouldn't have been invited to leave the WAC for the Mountain West.

So the teams that defined the conference for 37 years were the teams that brought it down. Which must have been tough for the WAC to accept. It's hard when longtime friends move, harder still when the neighborhood goes with them.