The Western Athletic Conference has officially invited Southern Utah University to join its league and leave the Big Sky, according to multiple reports.

Recognition of the invitation was first reported by Chris Kwiecinski of The Spectrum in St. George on Tuesday morning.

“We have received an official invitation from the Western Athletic Conference yesterday,” SUU told The Spectrum in a written statement. “We have not made a final decision, but are seriously considering it.

The Deseret News followed with a report to the same.

Making public an official invitation appears to be the home stretch of a process underway for several months that would include resurrecting the WAC as a football conference, this time at the FCS level.

Matt Brown, a national writer about off-the-field forces in college athletics for his newsletter Extra Points, reported in early October that the WAC would invite Southern Utah to help build a football league.

On the heels of adding football schools Dixie State and Tarleton State, who are currently FCS independents in that sport, Brown has reported that the WAC aims to add Texas football schools Abilene Christian, Lamar, Sam Houston State and Stephen F. Austin.

Brown reports the five additions will be finalized in the coming weeks and that “I’ve been told for weeks that SUU is taking that offer.”

Over the past decade of college conference realignment, typically institutions don’t recognize official invitations unless both sides are in agreement on the change.

Such a move, if finalized, would would group Southern Utah with Dixie State and Utah Valley in the WAC. It would also continue SUU’s nomadic journey in Division I.

After a handful of years as a Division I independent starting in 1988, the Thunderbirds played basketball in the Mid-Continental Conference, which then became the Summit League, from 1997 to 2012, before joining the Big Sky. In football, Southern Utah competed in the FCS Great West Conference from 2004-2011.