From Surf Wiki (app.surf) — the open knowledge base

American West Conference

College athletic conference in the United States

Summary

College athletic conference in the United States

Field	Value
name	American West Conference
logo	American West Conference logo.png
logo_size	150
founded	1993
folded	1996
association	NCAA
division	Division I
subdivision	I-AA
teams	4 (final) 5 (total)
region	Western United States
commissioner	Vic Buccola
map	American West Conference-USA-states.png
map_size	250

The American West Conference (AWC) was a college athletic conference in the United States from 1993 to 1996. It consisted of schools in California and Utah. The charter members of the conference were California Polytechnic State University; California State University, Northridge; California State University, Sacramento; the University of California, Davis; and Southern Utah University.

The conference comprised schools from the old Western Football Conference that had recently made the move from NCAA Division II to NCAA Division I. The conference was founded on July 15, 1993, as an NCAA Division I-AA football-only conference. It added additional sports a year later. The members were prompted to move their programs in response to an NCAA ruling barring member institutions from competing in football at a lower level than other sports.

The only commissioner of the American West Conference was Vic Buccola, who had been the athletic director at Cal Poly from 1973 to 1981, and commissioner of the Western Football Conference from 1981 to 1992.

History

1993–94: I-AA football only

UC Davis and Southern Utah tied for the 1993 AWC football championship with 3–1 records. Although UC Davis was a conference member, the team was listed in Division II polls, and participated in the Division II postseason.

1994–95

UC Davis left the AWC after the 1993 season, opting to stay in Division II, leaving Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Cal State Northridge, Sacramento State, Southern Utah for the 1994–95 season. In the 1994–95 season, the AWC sponsored men's and women's cross country, men's and women's basketball, men's and women's track and field, and women's tennis, in addition to football. The AWC did not have an automatic bid to the NCAA championships since the NCAA requires a conference to have six teams.

Cal Poly San Luis Obispo won the 1994 AWC football championship.

1995–96

The 1995–96 season was the last season of the AWC. Cal Poly accepted an invitation to the Big West Conference. Cal State Northridge and Sacramento State accepted invitations to the Big Sky Conference. Southern Utah became an independent until they became members of the Mid-Continent Conference, now called the Summit League, in 1997.

By winning the 400 Meter Intermediate Hurdle championship races in both 1995 and 1996, David Baeza became the only Men's 400IH American West Conference Champion in history. He also won the 1996 400m Dash Championship race after finishing 3rd in the 1995 championship race.

Aftermath

Cal State Northridge left the Big Sky for the Big West in 2001. That year, they operated as a I-AA independent in football, and in 2002 their football program was dropped.

UC Davis made the decision to move up to Division I in 2003, and in 2007 they joined Cal State Northridge and Cal Poly in the Big West.

Former AWC members UC Davis, Cal Poly, and Southern Utah would later found the Great West Football Conference (later renamed the Great West Conference), along with newcomers Northern Colorado, North Dakota State, and South Dakota State from the North Central Conference, as a home for their football programs at the I-AA level in 2004. This conference remained small much like the AWC for its entire existence, ranging from only 5 to 6 football members at any given time. In late 2010, the Big Sky Conference announced it would add UC Davis and Cal Poly as football-only members, as well as Southern Utah as a full member, thus reuniting these schools with Sacramento State in football. This move effectively dissolved the Great West as a football-sponsoring conference.

Membership timeline

DateFormat = yyyy ImageSize = width:850 height:auto barincrement:30 Period = from:1993 till:2014 TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal PlotArea = right:30 left:0 bottom:50 top:5

Colors = id:barcolor id:line value:black id:bg value:white

PlotData= width:15 textcolor:black shift:(5,-5) anchor:from fontsize:s

bar:1 color:Red from:1993 till:1994 text:UC Davis bar:1 color:blue from:1994 shift:(80,-5) till:2003 text:CCAA bar:1 color:white from:2003 till:2007 text:Independent bar:1 color:tan1 from:2007 till:2014 text:Big West

bar:2 color:Red from:1993 till:1994 text:Cal Poly bar:2 color:powderblue from:1994 till:1996 bar:2 color:tan1 from:1996 till:2014 text:Big West

bar:3 color:Red from:1993 till:1994 text:Cal State Northridge bar:3 color:powderblue from:1994 till:1996 bar:3 color:green from:1996 till:2001 text:Big Sky bar:3 color:tan1 from:2001 till:2014 text:Big West

bar:4 color:Red from:1993 till:1994 text:Sacramento State bar:4 color:powderblue from:1994 till:1996 bar:4 color:green from:1996 till:2014 text:Big Sky

bar:5 color:Red from:1993 till:1994 text:Southern Utah bar:5 color:powderblue from:1994 till:1996 bar:5 color:white from:1996 till:1997 text:Indy bar:5 color:tan2 from:1997 till:2012 text:The Summit bar:5 color:green from:2012 till:2014 text:Big Sky

ScaleMajor = gridcolor:line unit:year increment:1 start:1993

TextData = fontsize:L textcolor:black pos:(260,30) # tabs:(0-center) text:"American West Conference Membership History"

Football standings

Men's basketball

Regular season standings

Conference tournament champions

1995 —
1996 —

Men's Basketball Player of the Year

Main article: American West Conference Men's Basketball Player of the Year

Men's track & field champions

400m

1996 David Baeza - Cal Poly

400IH

1995 David Baeza - Cal Poly
1996 David Baeza - Cal Poly

Citations

References

1995 Cal State Northridge football media guide, p. 32

References

Senior, Ryan. (July 16, 1993). "Cal Poly moving to Division I". Santa Maria Times.
(November 2, 1993). "College polls, NCAA Division II". [[The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier.
(November 28, 1993). "NCAA Division II Playoffs". [[St. Louis Post Dispatch]].

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

american-west-conference sports-in-the-western-united-states defunct-ncaa-division-i-conferences sports-leagues-established-in-1993 sports-leagues-disestablished-in-1996 articles-which-contain-graphical-timelines 1993-establishments-in-the-united-states 1996-disestablishments-in-the-united-states

Want to explore this topic further?

Ask Mako anything about American West Conference — get instant answers, deeper analysis, and related topics.

Research with Mako

Free with your Surf account

Content sourced from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

This content may have been generated or modified by AI. CloudSurf Software LLC is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of AI-generated content. Always verify important information from primary sources.

Report