In Loving Memory of the Pac-12 Conference (1915-2024) as We Knew It

It has been a year of ‘lasts’ for Pac-12 schools. Amid the massive upheaval of NCAA Division I college athletics, the Pac-12 as ewe know it is coming to an end, including the last Pac-12 Swimming & Diving Championship with the historic blue-bloods of the west coast wrapping up on Saturday in Federal Way, Washington.

Of the 14 Pac-12 Swimming & Diving Programs (six men, eight women), only one does not have a new home for next season: the women of Washington State. We can’t quite say “this is the end of the Pac-12,” because the remaining teams from Washington State and Oregon State have to publicly-posture about the continuation of the conference in order to leverage the best future for themselves, but this is definitely the end of the Pac-12 as we knew it.

Of the current 12 full members, four have been members of the conference since it was founded in 1915 (Cal, Oregon, Oregon State, Stanford). Washington State (1917) and Stanford (1918) joined shortly thereafter, while USC (1922) and UCLA (1928), which wasn’t founded until 1919, both have almost 100 years in the conference.

The two Arizona schools joined in 1978, and the last change to the conference came in 2011 when Colorado (no swimming program) and Utah joined the fray. Utah won their first two women’s Pac-12 titles two weeks ago, both from freshman Emilia Nilsson Garip in diving

While California is the country’s most-populous state, the Pac-12 was always battling against geography. The Mountain and Pacific time zones only contain 23.3% of the US population (almost half of Americans live on eastern time), which means late time slots for football and basketball games after most of the country has gone to bed.

Still, they have big alumni bases and big, wealthy regional fan bases, and massive television markets in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix. There was enough appeal for conferences like the Big Ten to give up pieces of their massive deals to grab these teams.

I think there’s going to be simultaneously excitement and disappointment when these moves are completed. I cannot wait for the first USC-Michigan matchup in Big Ten football, or the first Cal-Stanford-Virginia-NC State championship meet in the ACC. But I can’t help but feel that we’ve lost something important in collegiate athletics, the sort of regionality that ties sports back to century-old roots and creates at least an illusion that they’re about something more than money.

The Pac-12

All-Time Pac-12 Titles (Most Recent Win in Parenthesis)

Men:

• Stanford – 33 (2017) – includes 31 straight from 1982 through 2012
• USC – 18 (2015) – includes 3 “South” championships in 1976, 1977, 1978
• Cal – 9 (2022)
• Washington – 3 (1978) – includes 3 “North” championships in 1976, 1977, 1978, program cut in 2009
• UCLA – 2 (1971) – cut in 1994
• Arizona State – 2 (2024)

Women:

• Stanford – 25 (2023) – including the first 13 titles from 1987 through 1999
• Cal – 6 (2024)
• Arizona – 4 (2008)
• UCLA – 2 (2003)
• USC – 1 (2016)

Event Wins by School

For men, includes North and South titles from 1976-1978

Men:

1. Stanford – 298
2. USC – 218
3. Cal – 184
4. UCLA – 90
5. Arizona State – 84
6. Arizona – 79
7. Washington – 51
8. Oregon – 32
9. Washington State – 6
10. Utah – 4

Women:

1. Stanford – 264
2. USC – 130
3. Cal – 110
4. Arizona – 44
5. UCLA – 33
6. Arizona State – 31
7. Washington – 5
8. Utah – 2
9. Washington State – 1
10. Oregon State – 1

Current Pac-12 teams have won 17 women’s swimming & diving NCAA titles, while men’s teams have won 27 – with another expected from the Arizona State or Cal men this year.

Across all sports, Pac-12 members have won 555 NCAA Championships, which is 256 more than the next-closest conference, the Big Ten, earning it the moniker “Conference of Champions.”

Where they’re headed