the WAC and MWC.
Membership in the WAC and MWC brought us a lot of wins, which helped in getting ranked (remember when we used to be ranked nearly every year?) and in recruiting. And all the momentum created from the above produced years like 1991, 1996, 2009, etc where we pulled off a win against a CFB blue blood.
We can scoff all we want at "meaningless" conference championships but our program was built on the foundation of winning our "meaningless" conference every year.