Pac 10 Conference Collapse of 2024 Quiz

Answer:

On December 2, 1915, the Pacific Coast Conference was established by colleges on the West Coast of the United States. The original conference members were the University of California, University of Washington, University of Oregon, and Oregon Agricultural College (now Oregon State University). After many comings and goings the Pacific-10 Conference (Pac-10) was established in 1978 with ten universities included. In 2011, the University of Colorado and Utah joined and they became the Pac-12 Conference.

While the Pac-12 Conference is an educational grouping of schools, they had been most well known for being the most successful athletic conference for total national titles won collectively in all sports at one point. Powerhouse schools like USC (the University of Southern California), UCLA (the University of California in Los Angeles), Stanford, and Washington were dominant athletic programs. Then came a major shift in college athletics in 2021. A trend toward creating a set of Power Five Conferences began and big schools were moving their affiliation to new conferences. The Pac-12 didn't join the transition. So it became the Power Four Conferences which included the Big 10, Atlantic Coast Conference, the Southeastern Conference, and the Big 12.

Each of the Power Four Conferences swooped in and claimed major schools from smaller conferences to join theirs. But some of the biggest prize institutions to switch affiliations came from the Pac-12 Conference. In 2022, UCLA and USC announced they were joining the Big 10. In August 2023, the Universities of Oregon and Washington followed them to the Big 10. Down to eight teams, the frenzy continued. Arizona, Arizona State, Utah, and Colorado next announced they were leaving the Pac-12 and heading to the Big 8 Conference. Stanford and the University of California joined the Atlantic Coast Conference, a group of universities located on a complete different ocean! When all was said and done, by September of 2023, only two schools from the Pac-12 Conference remained, Oregon State and Washington State. Journalists were calling them the Pac-2 Conference.