American_West_Conference
American West Conference
College athletic conference in the United States
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.[1] 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.
