There was a been-there, done-that vibe when it was officially announced Thursday that Boise State, Fresno State, Colorado State and San Diego State will abandon the Mountain West Conference — and the Hawaii football team — to join a rebuilding Pac-12 Conference in July 2026.

In 1998, leaders of half of the 16 Western Athletic Conference schools had a clandestine meeting at the Denver airport to plot their secession to form the Mountain West. None of the jilted, including then WAC commissioner Karl Benson and UH president Kenneth Mortimer, had an inkling about the move. This week, once again, UH, which had moved from the WAC to join the MW as a football-only member in 2012, was caught off guard.

“This is somewhat reminiscent of 1998 all over again,” Benson said.

The WAC was able to rebound, particularly in football. In 1999, the first football season with a thinned WAC membership, the Rainbow Warriors won a share of the league title. In 2000, the WAC added Nevada. A year later, Boise State and Louisiana Tech joined. Boise State enjoyed unparalleled success for a mid-major program. The Warriors had a 12-0 regular season in 2007.

“We rebuilt the WAC,” Benson said. “That’s an example of what can happen when a conference is gutted.”

In an open letter to fans on Wednesday, UH athletic director Craig Angelos promised a commitment to the football program and the MW. In a text to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Angelos said UH did not apply for membership in the Pac-12, which was reduced to Oregon State and Washington State following defections by 10 schools.

The challenges are imposing for the MW and the new Pac-12. Similar to 1998, the “gutted” league was left with eight members — the minimum to retain FBS status (known as Division I-A in 1998). But this time, because UH is a football-only affiliate (with most of its other sports in the Big West), the MW will have seven full-time members in 2026, enough to receive automatic berths in NCAA championships.

It is unlikely UH will move the rest of its sports teams from the Big West to the MW. The MW can try to coax other FBS schools to join as full-time members. The league also could go after Sacramento State, Idaho, Montana and Montana State. But those schools compete at the FCS level, and it would take two years for them to declare for FBS status and fulfill a probation period.

Even with the addition of the four MW schools, Oregon State and Washington State still need to add at least two more schools for the Pac-12 to retain FBS eligibility. The obvious choices would be to bring back former Pac-12 members California and Stanford. But both schools turned down a chance to remain with Oregon State and Washington State before bolting for the Atlantic Coast Conference.

“Do Cal and Stanford, for whatever reason on their own, come to a decision they made a bad decision (in joining the ACC) and need to go back?” Benson said. “That’s not going to happen in this window. Oregon State and Washington State need two more members to declare their desire to join the Pac-12 effective July 1, 2026.”

Benson said it was surprising “there weren’t six schools already teed up to declare their intention to join the Pac-12.” Now the Pac-12 and MW will have to compete from the same pool of schools.

MW members Air Force and UNLV also could be considerations to fill the Pac-12 two pukas. Air Force and UNLV were two of the eight schools that seceded from the WAC to form the MW in 1998.

Additional defections could further cloud the future of the MW, whose television contract with CBS/Fox expires at the end of the 2025-26 academic year, and UH. It is the school presidents, not MW commissioner Gloria Nevarez, who set athletic policies. David Lassner is retiring as UH president at the end of the year. Public meetings are being arranged for the two finalists seeking to replace Lassner.

San Diego State and Boise State looked into other conferences for several years. Colorado State built a new stadium and facilities with the hope of joining the Big 12. UH, which never showed restlessness with a conference, is playing its home games in a temporary venue where most of the bleachers, like the portable bathrooms, are leased.

The WAC is a cautionary tale for the MW. After more than a decade of success following the 1998 secessions, continued defections led to the WAC getting out of the football business in 2012. The conference reinstated football in 2021. But with more membership changes, the WAC became a non-football conference in 2023.

For the Mountain West, history is not worth repeating.