When some folks look at the announced amalgamation of the Mountain West and Conference USA for 2013, they see a new 16-school behemoth.

Kenneth Mortimer sees vindication of the past.

Nearly 18 years ago as president of the University of Hawaii and chair of the Western Athletic Conference Board of Directors, Mortimer played a key role in the creation of the first 16-member, so-called “super” conference.

Motto at the time: “Sixteen schools, nine states, four time zones, 4,000 miles … no limits.”

That WAC stretched from Honolulu to Tulsa, Okla., but the grand vision lasted barely three years before it was torn apart by internecine squabbles that led to the creation of the MWC and expanded C-USA.

Now, some of the same schools that formed — and soon shredded — the original 16-team model are involved in the new yet-to-be-named successor.

When Mortimer, now retired and living in Washington state, read the news this week he flashed back to the 1994 original.

“I said to myself, ‘it was the right move but, maybe, just the timing was wrong.’ ” Mortimer said.

Back then, the WAC was a 10-member conference growing in stature and ambition. When the Southwest Conference broke up and Texas Christian, Southern Methodist and Rice were left adrift, the WAC, which was already considering several other schools as expansion candidates, saw an opening. And, it believed, the future.

“We felt the money was going to come down from television and we sought to better position the WAC for it,” Mortimer said. “We thought, in five or six years, the big contracts would come.”

The WAC athletic directors wanted to add two schools, Nevada-Las Vegas and TCU, and have a 12-team, two division league. But the presidents wanted bigger. They wanted what became 16 schools arrayed in four divisions.

“We thought by making that kind of a splash we would be an attractive partner for any television network, particularly when you thought about big contracts,” Mortimer said.

So, they took UNLV, San Jose State, TCU, SMU, Rice and Tulsa. And, as it turned out, all the baggage and considerable differences that came with them. Within two years, disagreements over alignments, revenue sharing, travel subsidies and other issues had opened deep fissures in the membership.

By 1999 eight schools had split off to form the MWC. By 2005 six more were gone to C-USA and the WAC, despite the additions of Boise State and Nevada, was not able to recapture the prominence it was showing signs of beginning to achieve.

Now, 10 of the original Gang of 16 (UH, Fresno State, UNLV, Texas-El Paso, Rice, Tulsa, Air Force, Colorado State, New Mexico and Wyoming) are being reassembled with six additional members and the possibility of more for the new, as-yet-unnamed conference in 2013.

Given the perspective of history, Mortimer said, “I’d like to talk to some of those guys (from the original 16) now.”

But his is also a voice worth listening to for the new 16 if that conference is to avoid the pitfalls of the past.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.