The Western Wrestling Conference was a NCAA Division I wrestling-only conference that competed from 2006 through 2015. All of its past members are now associate members of the Big 12 Conference; all except Fresno State compete only in Big 12 wrestling.
History
The conference was formed on April 27, 2006 by eight schools with wrestling squads that had formerly competed as independents since the WWC charter members were all members of conferences that did not sponsor wrestling except one true independent. The original members were the United States Air Force Academy and the University of Wyoming of the Mountain West Conference, California State University, Fresno from the Western Athletic Conference, North Dakota State University and South Dakota State University of The Summit League, the University of Northern Colorado out of the Big Sky Conference, the University of Northern Iowa from the Missouri Valley Conference, and independent Utah Valley University. Fresno State dropped its wrestling program before competing in the conference. On October 22, 2006 the conference logo, designed by Flint Communications of Fargo, North Dakota was introduced. The conference began competition in the 2006-07 school year. In 2012, Northern Iowa became an associate member of the Mid-American Conference, reducing the WWC membership to only six schools. Lacking the required minimum of seven member schools, the NCAA did not recognize the conference and required the WWC schools athletes to qualify for the NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships through the Western Regional Tournament — a tournament which included only the six WCC schools and also served as the de facto conference championship. The Big 12 Conference had been wrestling with only four teams since Nebraska moved to the Big Ten in 2011, but the NCAA had annually granted the conference a waiver for its conference championships to be recognized and its champions and runnersup to be granted automatic qualification to the national championships. In 2015, the NCAA declined to grant the waiver, and the Big 12 Conference coaches declined to have their athletes wrestle in the Western Regional Tournament. As a result, Big 12 wrestlers advanced to the NCAA Championships only as at-large invitees. At that time, talk began about the Big 12 inviting the Western Wrestling Conference teams to become affiliate members of the Big 12. On July 29, 2015, the Big 12 Conference and the six member schools of the WWC announced that Air Force, North Dakota State, Northern Colorado, South Dakota State, Utah Valley, and Wyoming were being added to the Big 12's wrestling competition as affiliates, joining Big 12 full member schools Iowa State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and West Virginia to make a ten team conference slate. While expanding the competition by 150%, the Big 12 chose to end its tradition of holding the championships at campus sites and held the 2016 Big 12 Wrestling Championships at the neutral Sprint Center in Kansas City, Missouri. The WWC's absorption by the Big 12 was completed in 2017, when the Big 12 added Northern Iowa and the resurrected Fresno State wrestling program as associate members.
