What happened to Pac-12? Why the former power conference has two teams

On Saturday, two of college football's fiercest regional rivalries will add another chapter to their long history: No. 6 Oregon travels to Oregon State and Washington hosts Washington State.

The games have long been a staple of college football in the Pacific Northwest, and for decades they had a crucial say in determining who won a conference championship and qualified to play in the Rose Bowl (or sometimes even the national championship game).

This year, however, the Apple Cup and the game formerly known as the Civil War will look a little different. Instead of the usual matchup at the end of the regular season, the matchups will take place in Week 3. And, perhaps more notably, for the first time in a long time, these will be non-conference games.

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For generations, the two schools from Oregon and Washington were members of the same western-based conference, which went by different names depending on the number of members and ranged from Pac-8 to Pac-10 to Pac-12.

Yet today, this 109-year-old league is a fraction of what it once was — literally — and Saturday's two rivalry games reflect that new reality. Washington and Oregon are now in the Big Ten, along with longtime conference mates UCLA and USC. Washington State and Oregon State are the only two remaining members of the Pac-12 … for now.

How exactly did it get to this point, that a century-old organization collapsed in a matter of weeks? Here's a closer look at the Pac-12, its history, its disintegration, and where the conference stands today:

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Pac-12 History

Today's Pac-12 was founded in 1915 as the Pacific Coast Conference, with Washington, Oregon, Oregon State and Cal as founding members. Washington State, Stanford, USC and UCLA joined in the next decade, as did Idaho and Montana, both of which left the league in the 1950s.

In 1968, the team was renamed Pacific-8 (Pac-8 for short) and in 1978 was converted to the Pac-10 with the addition of Arizona and Arizona State from the Western Athletic Conference.

Nearly half a century later, in 2010, the conference under new commissioner Larry Scott was on the verge of one of the most consequential moves in conference realignment history when it reportedly sought to add Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Colorado.

That potential expansion, which would have reduced the Big 12's membership to just six schools, ultimately never came to fruition. Only Colorado accepted the league's offer, although Scott also added Utah from the Mountain West Conference. The league did what so few others do and changed its name to reflect its current membership, moving from the Pac-10 to the Pac-12.

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What happened to the Pac-12?

The new 12-school system was to be short-lived. The decline was due to several different factors.

The Pac-12 fell behind financially

Even before members began fleeing, the conference was showing metaphorical cracks. Scott, once celebrated as a courageous and visionary leader, made several serious missteps that damaged the Pac-12's success.

The Pac-12 Network was intended to be a source of perpetual revenue, as the Big Ten Network and SEC Network are for their namesake leagues, but it never lived up to those optimistic projections. The conference received a subpar distribution deal that limited its reach to just 12.4 million subscribers in 2023 (compared to 46.4 million for the SEC Network). It never brought in an established network as an equity partner — as the SEC does with ESPN and the Big Ten with Fox — with the 12 universities instead opting to retain full ownership of the operation.

According to estimates by S&P Global Market Intelligence, cable providers paid just 14 cents per subscriber per month to broadcast the Pac-12 Network, a fraction of what they paid for the SEC Network (97 cents) and the Big Ten Network (77 cents).

This relative lack of revenue was exacerbated by wasteful spending.

Scott was the conference's highest-paid commissioner in 2019-20, earning $5.4 million during that time. He moved the league's headquarters from Walnut Creek, Calif., in the East Bay to downtown San Francisco, where the Pac-12 leased 113,000 square feet of office space for $92 million over 11 years, journalist John Canzano reported.

Although the league remained a predominant force in non-profit sports, its schools' football and basketball teams struggled to win their sport's most important prizes. During Scott's tenure, no Pac-12 team won a national football or basketball title. Only Oregon even made it to the Final Four in 2017. The conference has had no member of the College Football Playoff for six consecutive seasons from 2017 to 2022.

Scott's term as Pac-12 commissioner ended in June 2021, one year before his contract expired.

The lack of a competitive media rights agreement

Even with Scott gone and George Kliavkoff taking his place, the Pac-12's problems remained. Many of those headaches stemmed from a single, but extremely important, issue: the conference's media rights deal.

Shortly after adding Colorado and Utah and a conference championship game in football, the Pac-12 signed a 12-year, $3 billion media rights deal with Fox and ESPN. As part of the deal, the conference's schools agreed to an equal revenue share.

In the years that followed, however, other conferences signed larger and more lucrative television contracts. Because the money from these contracts made up the vast majority of a conference's annual distributions to its members, the Pac-12 fell behind.

As the end of the media rights deal loomed in 2024, these financial shortfalls were coupled with a sense of anxiety about what might come next. With this problem, one of the most historically stable leagues in college sports began to crumble.

In June 2022, UCLA and USC were admitted as new members of the Big Ten, creating a once-unimaginable connection between a predominantly Midwestern conference and two Los Angeles schools.

Without the Bruins and Trojans — and without their presence in the nation's second-largest media market — the Pac-12's efforts to secure a sufficient media rights deal became exponentially more difficult. ESPN had made an initial offer that would have paid out $30 million per school, but the 10 remaining Pac-12 members countered by demanding $50 million per school, Canzano said.

As those talks stalled, Fox and ESPN reached an agreement with the Big 12 for $31.7 million per school. Most notably, the Big 12's television contract was not set to expire until after the 2024-25 sports year, meaning it effectively beat the Pac-12 to the punch.

Previously, the Big 12 had endured its own scare following the announced departures of Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC in 2021. Rather than poach any of the Big 12's eight remaining members, the Pac-12 – which at the time still had UCLA and USC in its ranks – stayed where it was. The Big 12 did an about-face and picked up Cincinnati, Houston, UCF and BYU to bolster its position.

With a media rights deal still not secured, more dominoes began to fall for the Pac-12.

In July 2023, Colorado announced it would leave the league after 12 years to return to the Big 12. In the days that followed, Kliavkoff presented the nine increasingly anxious remaining members of the Pac-12 with the framework of a media rights deal with streaming service Apple TV.

The five-year deal would have reportedly been worth $23 million per school annually. That amount would have risen to $31.7 million if the league could attract 1.7 million Apple TV subscriptions. If it somehow managed to attract five million new subscriptions, that amount would rise to $50 million, putting it much closer to the Big Ten and SEC in payouts than the Big 12 or ACC.

For many of those colleges, this was not a compelling option, or at least came with an inherent risk that would not be present in a deal with a more traditional linear television provider. Within days, Oregon and Washington announced they would join UCLA and USC in the Big Ten, while Arizona, Arizona State and Utah followed Colorado into the Big 12.

Shortly thereafter, two of the four remaining Pac-12 schools – Cal and Stanford – joined the ACC, leaving the Beavers and Cougars as the only remaining teams from the old Pacific Coast Conference.

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Pac-12 expansion

After all these defections, the Pac-12 is now down to two members – Oregon State and Washington State, who are now part of what is widely jokingly referred to as the “Two Pac.”

Although the Pac-12 is still technically one conference, the Beavers and Cougars had to look elsewhere to fill their schedules. With a ton of open dates to fill, both schools agreed to a schedule with the Mountain West that would see them play three home and three away games against Mountain West programs each year. According to The Athletic, Oregon State and Washington State paid the Mountain West $14 million for those six games.

The deal offers some short-term security, but is only for one year. Mountain West decided not to renew the contract after a self-imposed deadline expired on September 1.

“For the 2025 season, Mountain West and its member institutions are working on their conference and non-conference schedules,” the league said in a statement.

What was once a temporary alliance born out of necessity has now become a predator-prey relationship.

Late Wednesday night, it was announced that the Pac-12 will add four schools from the Mountain West – Boise State, San Diego State, Colorado State and Fresno State – to join the newly formed conference beginning with the 2026-27 sports year.

Yahoo Sports reported that the move is the first in a “multi-phase expansion effort” to reach at least eight schools, the NCAA minimum for an organization to qualify as an FBS conference. That means the Mountain West, which has already lost four of its most prominent members, could soon face even more departures.

But it will come at a cost to the Pac-12. According to ESPN, the Mountain West will be able to charge an exit fee of “approximately $18 million” from each school it replaces, along with an additional penalty fee of $10 million to $12 million from the Pac-12 for each school it takes over, according to the terms of the agreement.

What happened to Pac-12? Why the former power conference has two teams – for now

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