After strong success throughout the mid-20th century, they struggled during most of the next several decades, following two ill-fated stints as an independent program and two more years in the geographically distant Sun Belt Conference after the Big West Conference, which had housed the Aggies since 1978, elected to stop sponsoring football in 2001. USU's other teams remained in that conference until the school was invited to join the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) in 2005. Many attribute the decline to administrators at both Utah and BYU freezing then-superior USU out of the newly formed WAC. They eventually were invited into the WAC after the two other schools had left to help form the Mountain West Conference. Subsequently, both Utah and BYU departed the Mountain West Conference and USU was invited to join that conference, where they currently reside.
