The Western Athletic Conference is back in business in the Dallas-Fort Worth area — only not in football.

Having lost TCU and SMU years ago, the WAC returned Thursday by adding one of the lesser-known institutions in the region, Texas-Arlington, effective July 1, 2012.

WAC officials approached UTA only two weeks ago, and everything clicked right away. The final step came Thursday with the board of regents for the University of Texas system voting to accept an invitation.

The WAC is going through a major renovation. With Fresno State, Hawaii and Nevada leaving after the upcoming season, membership was down to only five schools before a recruiting effort that has landed Seattle, Denver, Texas State and Texas-San Antonio, and now UTA for membership starting in the 2012-13 school year.

“There was a strong desire for the WAC to get to 10 teams to help basketball out and get to those 18 conference games which is huge,” Idaho athletic director Rob Spear said. “It certainly reduces the pressure you have in scheduling non-conference games. The University of Texas at Arlington, as we evaluated them, became very attractive. ... They have a tremendous basketball facility they’re bringing online, and they’re in a great geographic area.”

Only seven of the 10 members play football, with UTA among those that don’t. WAC Commissioner Karl Benson said he’ll be looking for two more football playing schools in hopes of having a 12-team league with nine football programs. He’s also hoping that UTA considers reviving football; the Mavericks ceased their program in 1985.

“I think today demonstrates that we definitely have a strong foundation,” Benson said. “The WAC looks much more attractive today than it did three months ago or six months ago. That’s what we’re going to play on as we go out and try to secure two football-playing schools.”

For UTA, jumping from the Southland Conference to the WAC is part of a decade-long campaign to raise the school’s stature in every way, UTA President James D. Spaniolo said.

Resuming the football program would seem to fit that, too, especially with UTA being the second-largest school in the UT system and the campus being only a few miles from the $1.3 billion Cowboys Stadium.

“We have not closed the door to football, but it’s not on our immediate horizon,” Spaniolo said. “We will look at that some time down the road, but we’ve got some other immediate priorities that need attention.”

The top of that list is opening a $78 million on-campus College Park Center that will be the home to the basketball and volleyball programs. It’s scheduled to open in December and seat 6,500.

“We know President Spaniolo will take a good, hard look at (adding football) and the WAC is hopeful the answer will come back yes,” Benson said.

Benson also noted the travel benefits of the new 10-team configuration, which features five schools in the West and five in the Central time zone.

With the WAC becoming a 10-team league on July 1, 2012, the league will be able to have travel partners when scheduling men’s and women’s basketball and volleyball, in order to reduce travel costs and class time missed by student-athletes.

The travel partners will be Idaho and Seattle, Utah State and San Jose State, Denver and New Mexico State, UT-Arlington and Louisiana Tech, and UT-San Antonio and Texas State. Denver and Seattle also do not play football.

In recent years with a nine-team league, the conference basketball schedule was a mishmash of games home and away, with some games on Thursdays and Saturdays, and others sprinkled in on Mondays and Wednesdays.

“The conference scheduling was always challenging to put together,” Spear said. “The WAC always struggled to put together a fair conference schedule. Now having travel partners it’s going to be easy to put together a conference schedule.”

UTA is leaving the Southland Conference, a league it helped start. UTSA and Texas State also are going from the Southland to the WAC.

Benson said he doesn’t anticipate adding any more teams between now and July 1, 2012.

“This time I’m sure these are the 10 members that will comprise the WAC a year from now. I don’t think there’s going to be any more surprises,” Benson said. “This was a surprise, but it was a very pleasant surprise.”