Northwest Conference (1908–1925)

Background

Northwest Intercollegiate Conference

In January 1908 officials at Whitman College called a conference of seven primary athletics-oriented universities in the region to reform a new intercollegiate athletics association.^[4] Each school was represented by two delegates at the Walla Walla conference — one representing the faculty and another representing the student body.^[4] The gathering was attended by six colleges — Idaho, Washington, Washington State, Oregon, Oregon Agricultural, and Whitman.^[4] A seventh institution, the University of Montana, was apparently invited to the reorganizational meeting^[5] but apparently did not attend.

At a two-day conference in Walla Walla, February 7–8, 1908, discussions on a broad range of topics were planned, including the eligibility of those participating in paid summer baseball, the development of a combined football schedule, and establishment of regional meets for track and field and debate.^[4] Rules for athletic participation including a one-year residence requirement and four year total of eligibility were also said to be promoted at the meeting by some participants.^[4]

The February 1908 conference in Walla Walla generated a binding set of rules for the six member schools for the 1908–09 and 1909–10 academic years.^[6] These included a four-year limit on athletic participation and a requirement that students transferring into member schools would not be eligible for athletic participation until they had been in attendance for one college year.^[6] The question of semi-professional summer baseball was to be left to the decision by athletic committees of each institution.^[6]

Rationalization of the football schedule was particularly desired, with the hope expressed that the newly rejuvenated conference would "either take control of, or in some way influence the arrangement of football schedules so that the northwest championship may be definitely decided each year, instead of leaving the schedule-making to a haphazard choice by individual managers."^[5] This aspiration was not to be achieved, however, and irregular scheduling among conference schools remained the norm.

Co-membership in the Pacific Coast Conference

At a December 3, 1915 meeting in Portland, Oregon, three conference members, Washington, Oregon, and Oregon Agricultural, who had helped form the new Pacific Coast Conference, noted that they would remain members of the Northwest Conference as well, and that the new conference was intended solely to allowing scheduling and set rules for competition with the California schools. An agreement was signed between the two conferences, setting rules for each and agreeing that rules from one conference would not apply to games in the other conference.^[7] The dual membership statuses remained in place a decade, even as other member schools also later joined the PCC.

Demise and rebirth

At a meeting on December 12, 1925, in Seattle, the larger member schools (Washington, Washington State, Idaho, Gonzaga, Montana, Oregon, and Oregon Agricultural) formally withdrew from the conference. The smaller member schools (Pacific University, Whitman College, and Willamette University) announced they had reorganized with three others (College of Idaho, Linfield College, and the College of Puget Sound) the night before at a meeting in Tacoma, and were retaining the Northwest Conference name and eligibity requirements. The decision of the larger schools to leave was described in the press as harmonious and for mutual advantage, with the smaller schools no longer being matched against the larger.^[3]