From 2011 to 2014, the WAC saw a near-total replacement of its membership. The departure of Boise State in 2011 for the Mountain West, to be followed by Nevada and Fresno State the next year, kicked off sequential rounds of additions and departures that brought in Denver, UTSA, Texas State, UT Arlington and Seattle, but saw the announced departure of all of the newly added schools except Seattle, along with Hawaiʻi, Utah State, San Jose State, Louisiana Tech and Idaho, leaving only New Mexico State and new member Seattle, thereby endangering the survival of the league. Reorganizing as a non-football conference, they repopulated their ranks with Chicago State, UT-Pan American (since merged into UTRGV), Utah Valley, CSU Bakersfield, UMKC (now known athletically as Kansas City) and Division II Grand Canyon University, but since none of these schools participate in women's gymnastics the conference dropped the sport. The WAC also added men's soccer in order to maintain its status as a Division I conference, recruiting four schools from the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation soccer league to join the three WAC members that sponsored the sport at that time.
