Pacific-12 Conference

The Pacific-12 Conference (Pac-12) is a college athletic conference that operates in the Western United States. It participates in the NCAA's Division I; its football teams compete in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS; formerly Division I-A), the higher of two levels of NCAA Division I football competition. The conference's 12 members, which are primarily flagship research universities in their respective regions, well-regarded academically, and with relatively large student enrollment, compete in 22 NCAA sports. It was founded as the Pacific Coast Conference (PCC), in 1915, whose principal members founded the (Athletic Association of Western Universities) (AAWU) in 1959, and went by the names Big Five, Big Six, Pacific-8, Pacific-10, becoming the Pacific-12 in 2011.

The "Conference of Champions," the Pac-12 has won more NCAA National Team Championships than any other conference in history; the three schools with the most NCAA team championships belong to the Pac-12 (UCLA, Stanford and USC, in that order). With Arizona State's softball title in 2011, the conference won its 400th NCAA Championship.

The current commissioner of the conference is Larry Scott who replaced Thomas C. Hansen, who retired in July 2009 after 26 years in that position. Prior to joining the Pac-10, Scott was Chairman and CEO of the Women's Tennis Association.

Affiliate members
The San Diego State men's soccer program will leave the Pac-12 for the Big West Conference in 2015, two years after it rejoins that conference as a full member.

Former members
No school has left the Pac-12 since its founding as the AAWU in 1959. Two members of the PCC never joined the AAWU.

Pacific Coast Conference
The roots of the Pacific-12 Conference go back to December 2, 1915, when the Pacific Coast Conference (PCC) was founded at a meeting at the Imperial Hotel in Portland, Oregon. Charter members were the University of California (now University of California, Berkeley), the University of Washington, the University of Oregon, and Oregon Agricultural College (now Oregon State University). The conference began play in 1916.

One year later, Washington State College (now Washington State University) joined the league, followed by Stanford University in 1918.

In 1922, the PCC expanded to eight teams with the admission of USC and Idaho. Montana joined the Conference in 1924, and in 1928, the PCC grew to 10 members with the addition of UCLA.

For many years, the conference split into two divisions for basketball (and baseball) — a Southern Division comprising the four California schools and a Northern Division comprising the six schools in the Pacific Northwest.

In 1950, Montana departed to join the Mountain States Conference. The PCC continued as a nine-team league through 1958.

AAWU (Big Five and Big Six)
Following a "pay-for-play" scandal at several PCC institutions (specifically California, USC, UCLA and Washington), the PCC disbanded in 1959. When those four and Stanford started talking about forming a new conference, retired Admiral Thomas J. Hamilton interceded and suggested the schools consider creating a "power conference." Nicknamed the "Airplane Conference", the five PCC schools would have played with other big schools including Army, Navy, Air Force, Notre Dame, Penn, Penn State, Duke, and Georgia Tech among others. The effort fell through when a Pentagon official vetoed the idea and the service academies backed out.

On July 1, 1959 the new Athletic Association of Western Universities was formed, with California, Stanford, UCLA, USC, and Washington as charter members. The conference also was popularly known as the Big Five from 1960 to 1962; when Washington State joined in 1962, the conference was then informally known as the Big Six.

Pacific-8
Oregon and Oregon State joined in 1964. With the addition of the two Oregon schools, the conference became known unofficially as the Pacific-8 (as there already was a Big Eight Conference). Idaho was never invited to join the AAWU; the Vandals were independent for four years until the formation of the Big Sky Conference in 1963.

In 1968, the AAWU formally renamed itself the Pacific-8 Conference, or Pac-8 for short. The Pac-8 did not allow a second bowl team from the conference until 1975.

Pacific-10
In 1978, the conference added WAC schools Arizona and Arizona State, to create the Pacific-10 Conference or Pac-10.

In 1986, the Pac-10 began sponsoring women's athletics. Prior to this time members' women's teams competed with other large universities on the Pacific coast in either the Northern Pacific Conference or the Western Collegiate Athletic Association.

In the mid-1990s the conference expressed interest in admitting the University of Colorado, as well as the University of Texas after the collapse of the Southwest Conference. Texas expressed an interest in joining a strong academic conference, but joined three fellow SWC schools (Texas A&M, Texas Tech, and Baylor) to combine with the Big Eight Conference to form the Big 12 Conference in 1996. Colorado elected at the time to remain in the newly-formed Big 12 Conference.

Before the addition of Colorado and Utah in 2011, only one Division I conference, the Ivy League, had maintained its membership for a longer time than the Pac-10. Commissioner Larry Scott said on February 9, 2010, that the window for expansion by the conference was open for the next year as the conference began negotiations for a new television deal. Speaking on a conference call to introduce former Big 12 commissioner Kevin Weiberg as his new deputy, Scott talked about possibly adding new teams to the conference and launching a new television network. Scott, the former head of the Women’s Tennis Association, took over the conference in July 2009. In his first eight months on the job, he saw growing interest from the membership over the possibility of adding teams for the first time since Arizona and Arizona State joined the conference in 1978.

Pacific-12
In early June 2010, there were reports that the Pac-10 would be considering adding up to six teams to the conference, including Texas Tech University, University of Texas at Austin, University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State University, University of Colorado at Boulder, or possibly Baylor University and Texas A&M University.

On June 10, 2010, the University of Colorado at Boulder officially accepted an invitation to join the Pac-10 Conference, effective in the 2012–2013 academic year. The school later announced it would join the conference a year earlier than previously announced, in the 2011-2012 academic year.

On June 15, 2010, a deal was reached between Texas and the Big 12 Conference to keep Texas, Texas Tech, Texas A&M, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State in the Big 12. Following Texas' decision, the other Big 12 schools that had been rumored candidates to join the Pac-10 announced they would remain in the Big 12. This deal effectively ended the Pac-10's ambition to potentially become a sixteen-team conference.

On June 17, 2010, the University of Utah officially accepted an invitation to join the Pac-10 Conference, effective in the 2011–2012 school year. Utah was a member of the WAC with Arizona and Arizona State before those two left for the Pac-10. The Utes joined from the Mountain West Conference. Utah is also the first "BCS Buster" to join a BCS conference, having played in (and won) two BCS games beforehand, and one of the first to leave the MWC, of which Utah was a charter member.

On July 27, 2010, the conference unveiled a new logo and announced that the Pac-10 would be renamed to the Pac-12 when two new universities would join the conference. On October 21, 2010 the Pac-12 announced that it would be divided into two divisions for purposes of football, with the North Division consisting of the schools in Oregon, Washington, and Northern California and the South Division consisting of Colorado, Utah, and the schools in Arizona and Southern California. On July 1, 2011 the Pac-12 assumed its current alignment when both Colorado and Utah officially joined as full members.

To this day, the Pac-12 claims the PCC's history as its own. It inherited the PCC's berth in the Rose Bowl, and the eight largest schools in the old PCC all eventually joined the new league. However, the older league had a separate charter.

The Pac-12 is one of the founding members of the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, a conference organized to provide competition in non-revenue Olympic sports. All Pac-12 members participate in at least one MPSF sport (men's and women's indoor track and field both actually have enough participating Pac-12 schools for the conference to sponsor a championship, but the Pac-12 has opted not to do so), and for certain sports, the Pac-12 admits certain schools as Associate Members.

Membership timeline
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Due to space limitations, not all of the post-PCC affiliations of Idaho and Montana are shown in this table:
 * From 2001 to 2005, Idaho remained in the Big West Conference, but had to find a new home for its football team since the Big West dropped football after the 2000 season. During this period, Idaho was a football-only member of the Sun Belt Conference.
 * Montana's tenure in the Mountain States Conference (popularly known as the Skyline Conference) was bookended by two academic years as an independent: 1950–51 and 1962–63.

NCAA national titles

 * through 2011-12 season (updated at end of school year)
 * combined championships are counted in the men column

These totals do not include football national championships, which the NCAA does not officially declare at the FBS level. Various polls, formulas, and other third-party systems have been used to determine national championships, not all of which are universally accepted.

USC claims 11 national football championships, California claims 5, Washington claims 2, and Colorado, Stanford, and UCLA each claim 1.

Conference champions

 * Football
 * Men's Basketball
 * Women's Basketball
 * Baseball
 * Softball
 * Gymnastics
 * Men's Soccer
 * Women's Soccer
 * Women's Volleyball

Football


Each of the 10 schools that were conference members before 2011 has its own in-state, conference rivalry. One is an intracity rivalry (UCLA-USC), and another is within the same metropolitan area (California-Stanford). The two schools that joined in 2011 were historic rivals in the Rocky Mountain region. These rivalries (and the name given to the football forms) are:


 * Oregon–Oregon State (The Civil War, the winner's Alumni Association gets the Platypus Trophy but is not recognized by the Universities).
 * California–Stanford (The Big Game, winner gets the Stanford Axe).
 * Arizona–Arizona State (The Duel in the Desert, winner gets the Territorial Cup).
 * Colorado-Utah (Rumble in the Rockies).
 * Washington–Washington State (The Apple Cup game, since 1962 the winner gets the Apple Cup trophy).
 * UCLA–USC (The Crosstown Showdown, winner gets the Victory Bell).

The two newest members, Colorado and Utah, have a football rivalry as well that had been dormant since 1962 - both were conference rivals previously in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference (now a Division II conference), and later the now-defunct Mountain States Conference (also known as the Skyline Conference). Even after Colorado joined what became the Big 12 in 1948 (the conference was then known popularly as the Big 7 Conference), the two schools continued their football rivalry for over a decade before ending it after the 1962 season. With the two schools being placed in the same division for football starting in 2011, the rivalry was revived with their 58th meeting during the 2011 Pac-12 season. Colorado leads the series 31–24–3.

There are other notable football rivalries within the Pac-12.

All of the California schools consider each other major rivals, due to the culture clash between Northern and Southern California. For USC, the big game is UCLA. For Stanford, their big game is California. But for both Stanford and California, their second biggest game is USC. California and UCLA have a rivalry rooted in their shared history as the top programs within the University of California system. Stanford and USC have a rivalry rooted in their shared history as the only private schools in the Pac-12. California and USC also have a long history, having played each other every year in football since 1916.

Oregon, Oregon State, Washington, and Washington State all consider each other major rivals due to the proximity and long history. The Oregon - Washington rivalry is sometimes referred to as the Border War.

Arizona and New Mexico have a recently renewed rivalry game, based upon when they were both members of the WAC and both states were longtime territories before being admitted as states in 1912. They played for the Kit Carson Rifle trophy, which was no longer used starting with their meeting in the 1997 Insight Bowl.

USC and Notre Dame have an intersectional rivalry (See Notre Dame – USC rivalry). The games in odd-numbered years in Indiana are played in mid-October, while the games in even-numbered years in Los Angeles are usually played in late November.

The isolated rural campuses of Washington State and Idaho are eight miles (13 km) apart on the Palouse, creating a natural border war. Idaho rejoined FBS in 1996; the football rivalry has been dubbed Battle of the Palouse.

Utah and BYU have a fierce rivalry that goes back to 1896 that until recently was an inter-conference rivalry nicknamed the Holy War.

With the NCAA permanently approving 12-game schedules in college football beginning in 2006, the Pac-10—alone among major conferences in doing so—went to a full nine-game conference schedule. Previously, the schools did not play one non-rival opponent, resulting in an eight-game conference schedule (four home games and four away). In 2010, the last season before the arrival of Colorado and Utah, the only other BCS conference that played a round-robin schedule was the Big East. The schedule consisted of one home and away game against the two schools in each region, plus the game against the primary rival.

Divisions
On October 21, 2010 the Pacific-10 announced the football divisions to be used when Utah and Colorado move from the Mountain West Conference and Big 12 Conference respectively, forming the new Pac-12 effective July 1, 2011. Divided into "North" and "South" divisions, each has the following schools in the divisions only for football--a North Division comprising the Pacific Northwest and Bay Area schools, and a South Division comprising the Mountain Time Zone and Southern California schools. However, the four California schools (gray background below) will still play each other every season.

A nine-game conference schedule is being maintained, with five matches within the assigned division and four matches from the opposite division. The four California teams will play each other every season. Thus, the four non-California teams in each division will only play one of the two California teams from the opposite division each year, facing the same school every other year on average.

The Pacific-12 Football Championship Game features the North Division Champion against the South Division Champion. The divisional champions are determined based on record in all conference games (both divisional and cross-divisional). The Championship Game is played at the home stadium of the divisional champion with the best record in all conference games (both divisional and cross-divisional).

Bowl games
The following is the current bowl selection order and the teams involved in each bowl:

Rivalries in other sports
All of the intra-conference rivalries in football are carried over into other sports.

During the 1970s, UCLA and Notre Dame had an intense men's basketball rivalry. For several years, it was one of a small number of non-conference games in Division I basketball that was played twice a season (home-and-away). The most famous game in the rivalry was on January 19, 1974, when Notre Dame scored the last 12 points of the game to nip UCLA and end the Bruins' record 88-game winning streak. This rivalry is now dormant, partly because Notre Dame is no longer independent in sports other than football (Big East).

In baseball, there are intense rivalries between the four southern schools. Arizona, Arizona State, and USC have long and successful histories in baseball and all have won national titles in the sport. The most intense series is widely regarded to be the "Basebrawl" series between USC and Arizona State in 1990. Arizona State swept the series and in the final game a bench clearing brawl spread quickly to the stands and made national headlines. Several were injured and riot police were called to end the fracas.

Washington and California have a longstanding rivalry in men's crew as the two traditionally dominant programs on the West Coast.

Due to the unique geographic nature of the Pac-12 teams, the teams travel in pairs for road basketball games. For example, on Thursday, February 28, 2008, USC played Arizona and UCLA played Arizona State. Two nights later the teams switched and USC played Arizona State and UCLA played Arizona. The teams are paired as follows: USC and UCLA (the L.A. teams), Arizona and Arizona State (the Arizona teams), California and Stanford (the Bay Area teams), Washington and Washington State (the Washington teams), Oregon and Oregon State (the Oregon teams), and Colorado and Utah (the Rocky Mountain teams). Usually, the games are played on Thursdays and Saturdays with a game or occasionally two on Sundays for television purposes. This pairing formula is also used in women's volleyball. To make scheduling simpler for men and women's basketball (a sport in which each conference member uses a single venue for both teams' home games), the schedule for women's basketball is the opposite of the men's schedule. For example, when the Oregon schools are hosting the men's teams from the Arizona schools, the Arizona schools host the women's teams from Oregon schools the same weekend.

This formula has made a tradition in conference play to keep track of how a team does against a particular region; and stats are kept at to how successful a team is against, for example, "the Bay Area schools" at home or away. Effective in the 2011-12 season, with the expansion into 12 teams, a 10-year rotation model has been developed to maintain the existing 18-game conference schedule. Teams remained paired with their regional rival. Each school plays its regional rival and six other teams both home and away, and the other four teams once - two at home and two away. The newest members, Colorado and Utah, are paired with each other. The single play opponents rotate every two years.

Facilities

 * Notes: Washington will play the 2012 football season as well as the 2011 Apple Cup at CenturyLink Field, due to construction at Husky Stadium. UCLA will split its 2011-2012 basketball games between the Los Angeles Sports Arena and the Honda Center in Anaheim while Pauley Pavilion is being renovated.

Academics
Eight of the twelve member schools are members of the Association of American Universities (AAU): The only FBS conference with more AAU members is the Big Ten with 11 out of 12 member institutions having AAU membership.
 * Stanford University
 * University of Arizona
 * University of California, Berkeley
 * University of California, Los Angeles
 * University of Colorado at Boulder
 * University of Oregon
 * University of Southern California
 * University of Washington

Additionally, these member schools are also highly ranked nationally and globally by various groups, including the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWR) and QS World University Rankings (QS). As of 2011, four Pac-12 institutions are ranked in the top 20 universities in the world, the most out of all conferences outside the Ivy League with Stanford ranked 2nd, UC Berkeley ranked 4th (the highest ranking of any public university), UCLA ranked 12th, and the University of Washington ranked at 16th.

PCC

 * Edwin N. Atherton 1940–44
 * Victor O. Schmidt 1944–59

AAWU

 * Thomas J. Hamilton 1959–68

Pacific-8

 * Thomas J. Hamilton 1968–71
 * Wiles Hallock 1971–78

Pacific-10

 * Wiles Hallock 1978–83
 * Thomas C. Hansen 1983–2009
 * Larry Scott 2009–2011

Pacific-12

 * Larry Scott 2011–present