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Utah Valley University will announce Tuesday that it is joining the Western Athletic Conference as a member in all sports except for football.
A press conference has been scheduled for 11 a.m. in the UCCU Center where UVU president Matthew S. Holland and athletic director Mike Jacobsen will accept an invitation to join the WAC for 2013-14 academic year along with Cal State Bakersfield. The conference also includes Seattle, Denver, New Mexico State and Idaho.
UVU applied for WAC membership last year, but fell short when the conference invited Seattle and Denver.
Utah Valley is currently a member of the Great West Conference, along with Houston Baptist, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Howard, South Carolina State, Delaware State, UT-Pan Am and Chicago State.
The WAC will provide a new home to all Utah Valley sports except wrestling, which competes in the Western Wrestling Conference. The Wolverines' women's softball team has been part of the Pacific Coast Softball Conference.
In August, interim WAC commissioner Jeff Hurd told The Associated Press that the league would not enough football members to compete in 2013, making the WAC the first Division I conference to give up on football since the Southwest Conference in 1995.
"The bottom line is those numbers are not out there," Hurd said. "So, my goal is to add enough schools to maintain the conference in all other sports, but football would not be one of them."