Pac-12 Conference

Full members

The Pac-12 currently has two full-member institutions. The conference was previously split into two divisions, the North Division and the South Division, for football only.

Notes

Membership map

Oregon State

Washington State

Little Rock

Cal State Bakersfield

Cal Poly SLO

Dallas Baptist

Northern Illinois

Southern Utah

San Diego State

Fresno
State

Boise
State

Colorado State

Utah
State

Gonzaga

Texas State

Pac-12 Conference members
– Full members
– Associate members
– Future members
– Future non-football members
– Future associate members

Future members

On September 12, 2024, the conference announced it would be adding four new members, Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, and San Diego State, on July 1, 2026.^[8] However, the conference needed to add at least two more football-playing members to be recognized by the NCAA as an FBS conference.^[9] On September 23, 2024, Utah State accepted an offer to join the league as its seventh member.^[4] This gave the Pac-12 the seven members needed to preserve its official "multisport" status,^[10] though one more football-sponsoring full member was needed to preserve FBS status.^[11] On September 30, 2024, the conference announced that Gonzaga, a non-football college, would be joining as a full member.^[12] In June 2025, it was reported that Texas State would announce its move to the Pac-12 on June 30, 2025, the last day before that school's exit fee from the Sun Belt Conference would have doubled from $5 million to $10 million.^[13] Texas State's arrival, announced that same day, marked the ninth full-time member for the Pac-12 and also the eighth and final football member required to preserve FBS status.^[14]

Notes

Affiliate members

The Pac-12 has two affiliate member institutions in California and one in Arkansas. All three of them participate in the Pac-12 for men's wrestling.

Notes

Future affiliate members

Three schools will join as single-sport members in 2026—Dallas Baptist University in baseball, Northern Illinois University in men's wrestling, and Southern Utah University in women's gymnastics.

Notes

Former full members

No school had left the Pac-12 from its founding as the AAWU in 1959 until 2024, when 10 of its 12 schools left. Two members of the PCC, Idaho and Montana, were not invited to join the AAWU or its successors.

Notes

Former affiliate members

Notes

Membership timeline

The Pac-12 claims the PCC's history as its own. Not only did it maintain the automatic bid from the Rose Bowl inherited from the PCC, but the eight largest schools in the old PCC all eventually joined the new league. However, the old PCC operated under a separate charter.

The Pac-12 is one of the founding members of the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF), 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). For certain sports, the Pac-12 admits certain schools as associate members.

Full members  Full members (non-football)  Associate members (football only)  Assoc. member (list sports) Independent  Other conference 1  Other conference 2 

Pacific Coast Conference

The roots of the Pac-12 Conference go back to December 2, 1915, when the Pacific Coast Conference (PCC) was founded at the Imperial Hotel in Portland, Oregon, during the annual meeting of the Northwest Conference schools.^[17][18] Charter members were the University of California (now University of California, Berkeley), University of Washington, University of Oregon, and Oregon Agricultural College (now Oregon State University).^[18] An official of Stanford University also attended the meeting but declined to join right away because, unlike the other schools, it was not going to sponsor a football team in the coming year and it was not willing to prohibit freshmen from competing in sports.^[18] The PCC 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 June 1959.

AAWU (Big Five and Big Six)

Following "pay-for-play" scandals at California, USC, UCLA, and Washington, the PCC disbanded in June 1959. Ten months earlier in August 1958, these four schools agreed to form a new conference that would take effect the following summer.^[19][20] When the four schools and Stanford began discussions for a new conference in 1959, retired admiral Thomas J. Hamilton interceded and suggested the schools consider creating a national "power conference" (Hamilton had been a key player, head coach, and athletic director at Navy, and was the current athletic director at Pittsburgh). Nicknamed the "Airplane Conference",^[21][22][23] the five former PCC schools would have played with other major academically oriented schools, including Army, Navy, Air Force, Notre Dame, Pitt, Penn State, and Syracuse.^[21][24] The effort fell through when a Pentagon official vetoed the idea and the service academies backed out.^[25]

On July 1, 1959, the new Athletic Association of Western Universities was launched, with California, UCLA, USC, and Washington as the four charter members.^[26] Stanford joined during the first month.^[20][27] Hamilton left Pittsburgh to become the first commissioner of the AAWU,^[26][28] and remained for twelve years.^[29] The conference also was popularly known as the Big Five from 1960 to 1962.^[30] When Washington State joined in 1962,^[31] the conference became informally known as the Big Six.^[30][32] The new league inherited the PCC's berth in the Rose Bowl; since 1947, the PCC champion had received an automatic bid to the bowl.

Idaho was never invited to join the AAWU;^[33] the Vandals were independent for four years until the formation of the Big Sky Conference in 1963, and were independent in football until 1965.

Pacific-8

Oregon and Oregon State joined in the summer of 1964.^[34][35][33] With their addition, the conference was known unofficially as the Pacific Athletic Conference,^{[36][37][38][39][40]} and then the Pacific-8. 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 the 1975 season;^[41] in basketball, participation in the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) was not allowed until 1973.^[42]

Pacific-10

In 1978, the conference added Arizona and Arizona State from the Western Athletic Conference, becoming the Pacific-10 Conference or Pac-10. The invitations to the schools were extended in December 1976,^[43] and the expansion formally announced in May 1977.^[44]

In the mid-1980s, three of the northwest schools (Oregon, Oregon State, Washington State) were having financial difficulties in athletics, primarily with revenue from football, and their long-term membership in the conference was in question.^[45]

The Pac-10 began sponsoring women's athletics in the fall of 1986.^[46][47] Women's teams previously competed with other large universities on the Pacific coast in either the Northern Pacific Conference or the Western Collegiate Athletic Association.^[48]

In the mid-1990s, the conference expressed interest in admitting the University of Colorado and 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 Southwest Conference schools (Texas A&M, Texas Tech, and Baylor) to merge with the Big Eight Conference to form the Big 12 Conference in 1996. Colorado elected to remain in the newly formed Big 12.^[49]

Before the addition of Colorado and Utah in 2011, only the Ivy League had maintained its membership for a longer time than the Pac-10 among Division I conferences. Commissioner Larry Scott said on February 9, 2010, that the window for expansion 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.^[50] 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.

"Legacy" Pac-12

In early June 2010, there were reports that the Pac-10 was considering adding up to six teams to the conference: the University of Texas, Texas A&M University, Texas Tech University, the University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State University, and the University of Colorado.^[51]

On June 10, 2010, the University of Colorado Boulder accepted an invitation to join the Pac-10 Conference, effective starting with the 2012–2013 academic year.^[52][53] 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 A&M, Texas Tech, 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.^[54]

On June 17, 2010, the University of Utah accepted an invitation to join the Pac-10 Conference, effective starting July 2011.^[52] Utah was a member of the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) with Arizona and Arizona State before those two left for the Pac-10 in 1978. The Utes left an expanded WAC with seven other schools in 1999 to form the new Mountain West Conference. Utah became the first "BCS Buster" to join a BCS conference, having played in (and won) two BCS games beforehand.

On July 27, 2010, the conference unveiled a new logo and announced that the Pac-10 would be renamed the Pac-12 when Utah and Colorado formally joined in July 2011. On October 21, the Pac-12 announced that its football competition would be split into two divisions—a North Division comprising the Pacific Northwest and Bay Area schools, and a South Division comprising the Mountain Time Zone and Southern California schools. On July 1, 2011, the Pac-12 assumed its 12-team alignment when both Colorado and Utah officially joined as full members.

On August 15, 2012, the conference debuted the Pac-12 Network. It was the third college sports conference to launch a dedicated network, and the first to completely fund and own their own network outright.

The conference had been based in Walnut Creek since the late 1970s until August 2014.^[55] Since 2014, the conference was headquartered in San Francisco, California, with the conference moving to working remotely once the lease expires in June 2023.^[56] The Pac-12 Network and meeting space for headquarters employees are now located at Bishop Ranch in San Ramon, an East Bay suburb.^[57]

NCAA conference realignment (2021–2023)

On August 24, 2021, the Pac-12, ACC, and Big Ten announced the formation of a "historic alliance" that would bring their member institutions "together on a collaborative approach surrounding the future evolution of college athletics and scheduling."^[58] The formation of this alliance between three of the Power Five conferences was in response to Oklahoma and Texas announcing plans to leave the Big 12 and join the SEC. The alliance included an inter-conference scheduling component for football and men's and women's basketball. In 2021, the Pac-12 paid $19.8 million to each of its member schools, the lowest distribution in the Power Five.^[59]

Despite the alliance, on June 30, 2022, UCLA and USC announced their departure for the Big Ten Conference beginning in the 2024–25 academic year.^[60][61] As a result of losing two of the conference's tentpole programs (and the entirety of the Los Angeles television market), the conference's ongoing media rights negotiations became much more complicated. ESPN reportedly had made an offer in which the ten remaining schools would receive around $30 million per year. This was rejected by member schools, who countered with a demand for $50 million per school per year. ESPN responded by walking away from the negotiating table.^[62]

Reports began circulating that Commissioner Kliavkoff had been to the San Diego State University and SMU campuses for tours. This was allegedly part of the conference's vetting process for expansion.^[63] San Diego State sent the Mountain West Conference a letter notifying it of the school's impending departure. The Pac-12, however, was adamant about securing a media rights deal before expanding. Without an incoming offer before a June 30, 2023, deadline, San Diego State had to rescind its notice of intention to leave the Mountain West.^[64]

At the start of Pac-12 Media Days on July 21, 2023, Commissioner Kliavkoff was asked about the status of the media rights deal and conference expansion, deflecting most questions on the matter. Colorado president Rick George left Media Days early to return to Boulder. Less than a week later on July 27, 2023, Colorado announced it would return to the Big 12 as of the 2024–25 school year.^[65]

The nine remaining Pac-12 members then demanded an update on the negotiations, including numbers on expected payouts. Kliavkoff came back with a deal from the Apple TV+ streaming service that paid member institutions in the low-to-mid-$20 million range, albeit with escalators for meeting subscriber quotas. On August 4, 2023, Oregon and Washington announced they would be following UCLA and USC to the Big Ten conference for the 2024 season.^[66] Later on that same day, Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah announced that they would follow Colorado to the Big 12 Conference starting in 2024.^[67] On September 1, 2023, California and Stanford announced their departure for the Atlantic Coast Conference starting in 2024.^[68]

In September 2023, Yahoo! Sports reported that the Pac-12 is "expected to operate as a two-member conference at least for [2024–25]"^[69] and would be recognized under a two-year grace period, until 2026, to meet conference requirements in the NCAA bylaws.^[70]

On September 8, 2023, Oregon State and Washington State filed a lawsuit against the Pac-12 and Commissioner George Kliavkoff in Washington State Superior Court for control of the conference and its assets. They contended that the departing schools, under the conference constitution, forfeited their right to participate in governing the conference by publicly declaring their intention to leave, and that if they retain control they might use it to dissolve the league and drain its millions of dollars in assets.^[71] On November 14, 2023, Judge Gary Libey of the Whitman County, Washington, Superior Court ruled in favor of the two schools.^[72] The University of Washington (UW) filed an emergency motion to keep the two schools from gaining full control of the conference for the 2023–24 academic year; a Washington Supreme Court commissioner granted UW's motion on November 28, 2023.^[73] However, this was overturned on December 15, 2023, by the Washington State Supreme Court, giving Oregon State and Washington State sole control of the Pac-12, meaning the departing schools will no longer be able to vote on conference decisions.^[74]

On December 5, 2023, Oregon State and Washington State announced that they had entered into a football alliance with the Mountain West Conference (MW) for the 2024 season. With the alliance, both programs will play three home games and three away games against MW opponents.^[75] The West Coast Conference (WCC) has invited both schools to join as affiliate members for basketball and most other non-football sports.^[76][77] Both partnerships are expected to last from the fall of 2024 to the spring of 2026. Washington State will also participate in the Mountain West for baseball,^[78] but Oregon State, a three-time College World Series champion, will become a baseball independent.^[79]

After the ten schools departed, the conference continued using the Pac-12 name and branding for at least the 2024–25 academic year.^[80] Oregon State and Washington State were nicknamed the "Pac-2" by media outlets, to the point that a game between the two teams during the 2023 football season was jokingly dubbed the "Pac-2 Championship Game" by fans.^[81][82][83]

Conference re-build and expansion (2024–present)

Following the victory in the lawsuit, with sole access to all assets of the conference, Oregon State and Washington State were granted permission by the NCAA to act as a defunct conference for the 2024 and 2025 years while planning its future. If they had failed to meet membership requirements by July 1, 2026, the conference would have been disbanded.

Varsity teams for the two schools joined the West Coast Conference, Mountain West Conference, and Intercollegiate Rowing Association, depending on the sport, under temporary two-year agreements. Despite this, the Pac-12 sponsored six sports (football, men's and women's track and field, women's gymnastics, wrestling, and baseball). These teams functioned as independents and made heavy use of scheduling agreements with other conferences but acted under the Pac-12 banner and used Pac-12 promotional and broadcast material.

On September 12, 2024, it was announced that the conference would add four schools from the Mountain West, led by Boise State, with San Diego State, Fresno State, and Colorado State following. This violated an anti-poaching clause in the scheduling agreement contract between the Pac-12 and Mountain West, requiring an additional exit fee payment to the MWC, but the Pac-12 filed a lawsuit, arguing that the penalties were extreme and violated anti-trust laws.

With the conference now at six members and needing two more to get to the required number for FBS eligibility, the conference reached out to prospective members throughout mid-September, including American Conference members Memphis and Tulane, Mountain West member UNLV, and FBS Independent UConn. During this time, the conference also looked to add a member in Texas, targeting American members UTSA, North Texas, and Rice. It also looked for non-football teams. The West Coast Conference's Gonzaga was the Pac-12 top priority, followed by Saint Mary's and Creighton.

On September 23, 2024, Memphis, Tulane, USF, and UTSA released a joint statement, acknowledging interest by other conferences, but re-affirming their commitment to the American. UNLV also signed a grant of rights with the Mountain West, and so the Pac-12 regrouped, adding Utah State as its seventh conference member. Soon after, Utah State and Colorado State joined the anti-poaching lawsuit against the MWC. Boise State also later joined.

On September 30, 2024, it was announced that Gonzaga would join the conference as its eighth full member, but since Gonzaga does not field football, the conference still needed an eighth football-playing member to retain FBS eligibility.

As the Pac-12 looked to add their final required member, Texas State, due to a host of preferred reasons, was largely seen as the favorite.^[84] New Mexico State, was floated around as a backup emergency option to get to FBS eligibility if talks with Texas State had fallen through. Saint Mary's (non-football) was also mentioned during this time to boost the conference's basketball abilities.

On June 30, 2025, it was announced that Texas State would join the Pac-12 as its ninth full member and eighth football member, cementing the conference's eligibility for the FBS.^[85] It was subsequently reported that the conference was also seeking at least one football-only affiliate to allow for an eight-game conference schedule, with Memphis, UTSA, and Rice named as potential candidates.^[86] In September 2025, it was reported that the Pac-12 was unlikely to add another football playing conference member by 2026, with the conference instead looking towards a timeframe of 2027 to add one of the previously discussed American Conference members. For 2026, the conference instead looked to enter a scheduling agreement with a fellow Group of Six conference, largely believed to be Conference USA, to get the same schedule benefits, to help all conference members get an additional game to help fill out their schedules, as most Pac-12 teams at this time had only scheduled 3–4 non-conference games, so combined with a 7-game conference slate, conference members only had 10–11 regular season games scheduled on the books.

In September and October 2025, the conference acquired multiple affiliate members for specific "Olympic" sports. First, it was announced that the Dallas Baptist Patriots would join as a baseball-only member in 2027, moving from Conference USA.^[87] Then, the Southern Utah Thunderbirds were announced to be joining for women's gymnastics from the MPSF. Finally, the Northern Illinois Huskies were added for men's wrestling, joining from the MAC.

PCC

Commissioners of the forerunner PCC

• Herb Dana (193x–40)
• Edwin N. Atherton^[96][97] (1940–44)
• Victor O. Schmidt^[98] (1944–59)

National championships

NCAA team titles through the June 10, 2024; individual titles through July 1, 2016^[107]

These totals do not include football national championships, which the NCAA does not officially award 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. These totals also do not include championships prior to the inception of NCAA championships in each sport.

Conference champions

• Football
• Men's basketball
• Women's basketball
• Baseball
• Softball
• Gymnastics
• Men's soccer
• Women's soccer
• Women's volleyball

Men's sponsored sports by Pac-12 schools

Member-by-member sponsorship of men's sports sponsored by Pac-12 schools that have been announced as being sponsored by the Pac-12 in 2026–27.^[5]

Notes

Women's sponsored sports by Pac-12 schools

Member-by-member sponsorship of women's sports sponsored by Pac-12 schools that have been announced as being sponsored by the Pac-12 in 2026–27.^[5]

Notes

All-time school records

This list goes through the 2023 season.^[145]

Number of Claimed National Championships, as well as win–loss–tie records, include all seasons played, regardless of conference membership.

Rivalries

Each of the new six and existing two football schools will still play their main football rivalries, both intraconference and interconference. These rivalries (and the names given to the football forms) are:

Divisions

On October 21, 2010, the Pac-10 announced the creation of divisions and a championship game in football, to be used when Colorado and Utah joined the conference effective July 1, 2011. The twelve members were split into two divisions for football only: a North Division comprising the Pacific Northwest and Bay Area schools, and a South Division comprising the Mountain Time Zone and Los Angeles schools.^[146]

A nine-game conference schedule was maintained, with five games within the assigned division and four games from the opposite division. The four California teams, noted in the table in gray, still played each other every season— consequently, the four non-California teams in each division will only play one of the two California teams from the opposite division each year.

The Pac-12 Football Championship Game featured the North Division Champion against the South Division Champion for the first 11 years of its existence, with divisional champions determined based on record in all conference games (both divisional and cross-divisional). However, on May 18, 2022, the NCAA Division I Council announced that conferences would no longer be required to maintain divisions in order to hold a conference championship. As a result, later that same day, the Pac-12 announced that it would eliminate its divisions for the 2022 football season and beyond, with the championship game instead featuring the two Pac-12 teams with the highest winning percentage.^[147] It was the first FBS conference to scrap its divisions as a result of this change.

Bowl games

As of the 2023 college football season, the following is the selection order of bowl games with Pac-12 tie-ins. If a Pac-12 team is selected to participate in the College Football Playoff, all other bowl-eligible teams move up one spot in the order.

Pac-12 All-Century Football Team

In honor of the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the conference, an All-Century Team was unveiled on December 2, 2015, voted on by a panel of coaches, players, and the media.^[148]

• Quarterbacks: John Elway, Stanford; Marcus Mariota, Oregon; Jim Plunkett, Stanford; Andrew Luck, Stanford; Matt Leinart, USC
• Running backs: Marcus Allen, USC; O. J. Simpson, USC; Charles White, USC; Reggie Bush, USC; Mike Garrett, USC
• Wide receivers: Keyshawn Johnson, USC; Lynn Swann, USC; Marqise Lee, USC; J. J. Stokes, UCLA; Ken Margerum, Stanford
• Tight ends: Tony Gonzalez, California; Charle Young, USC;
• Offensive line: Jonathan Ogden, UCLA; Ron Yary, USC; Tony Boselli, USC; Anthony Muñoz, USC; Lincoln Kennedy, Washington; Brad Budde, USC; Randall McDaniel, Arizona State
• Defensive ends: Tedy Bruschi, Arizona; Terrell Suggs, Arizona State; Willie McGinest, USC; Andre Carter, California; Jim Jeffcoat, Arizona State
• Defensive tackles: Steve Emtman, Washington; Haloti Ngata, Oregon; Rob Waldrop, Arizona; Leonard Williams, USC; Ed White, California
• Linebackers Junior Seau, USC; Jerry Robinson, UCLA; Ricky Hunley, Arizona; Richard Wood, USC; Chris Claiborne, USC
• Cornerbacks Joey Browner, USC; Mel Renfro, Oregon; Chris McAlister, Arizona; Antoine Cason, Arizona
• Safeties: Ronnie Lott, USC; Kenny Easley, UCLA; Troy Polamalu, USC; Mark Carrier, USC
• Kicker: Jason Hanson, Washington State
• Punter: Tom Hackett, Utah
• Returner: Reggie Bush, USC
• Coach: John McKay, USC

Note: Bold Italic notes Offensive, Defensive and Coach of the Century selections. The voting panel was made up of 119 former players, coaches and media.^[149]

National championships, Final Fours, and NCAA tournament appearances

Pac-12 Conference basketball programs have combined to win 15 NCAA men's basketball championships as Pac-12 members, with another member having won a national championship before joining the conference. UCLA has won 11 national championships with Arizona, California, Oregon, Stanford winning one each as Pac-12 members, and Utah winning one national championship as a member of the Mountain States Conference. Eleven of the twelve legacy Pac-12 schools advanced to at least one Final Four before the 2024 mass departure, with Arizona State the only school that had not made an appearance. Future members Gonzaga and San Diego State have also reached the Final Four.

  Current members of the Big Ten
  Current members of the Big 12
  Current members of the ACC
  Future Pac-12 members

Seasons are listed by the calendar years in which they ended. Italics indicate honors earned before the school competed in the Pac-12.

NCAA tournament champions, runners-up and locations

† denotes overtime games. Multiple †'s indicate more than one overtime.^[157]

Post-season NIT championships and runners-up