The Pacific Coast Conference (PCC) was a

college athletic conference In college athletics in the United States, institutions typically join in conferences for regular play under different governing bodies. Varsity sports There are several national and regional associations governing the varsity teams of colleges ...

in the United States which existed from 1915 to 1959. Though the

Pac-12 Conference The Pac-12 Conference is a collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference, that operates in the Western United States, participating in 24 sports at the NCAA Division I level. Its College football, football teams compete in the NCAA D ...

claims the PCC's history as part of its own, with eight of the ten PCC members (including all four original PCC

charter A charter is the grant of authority or rights, stating that the granter formally recognizes the prerogative of the recipient to exercise the rights specified. It is implicit that the granter retains superiority (or sovereignty), and that the rec ...

members) now in the Pac-12, the older league had a completely different charter and was disbanded in 1959 due to a major crisis and scandal. Established on December 2, 1915, its four charter members were the University of California (now

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

), the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...

, the

University of Oregon The University of Oregon (UO, U of O or Oregon) is a public research university in Eugene, Oregon. Founded in 1876, the institution is well known for its strong ties to the sports apparel and marketing firm Nike, Inc, and its co-founder, billion ...

, and Oregon Agricultural College (now

Oregon State University Oregon State University (OSU) is a public land-grant, research university in Corvallis, Oregon. OSU offers more than 200 undergraduate-degree programs along with a variety of graduate and doctoral degrees. It has the 10th largest engineering co ...

Conference members

(1915–1959) *

Oregon State College Oregon State University (OSU) is a public land-grant, research university in Corvallis, Oregon. OSU offers more than 200 undergraduate-degree programs along with a variety of graduate and doctoral degrees. It has the 10th largest engineering co ...

(1915–1959) *

Washington State College Washington State University (Washington State, WSU, or informally Wazzu) is a public land-grant research university with its flagship, and oldest, campus in Pullman, Washington. Founded in 1890, WSU is also one of the oldest land-grant univer ...

(1917–1959) *

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

(1918–1959) *

University of Idaho The University of Idaho (U of I, or UIdaho) is a public land-grant research university in Moscow, Idaho. It is the state's land-grant and primary research university,, and the lead university in the Idaho Space Grant Consortium. The Universit ...

(1922–1959) *

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...

(1922–1959, suspended in 1924) *

University of Montana The University of Montana (UM) is a public research university in Missoula, Montana. UM is a flagship institution of the Montana University System and its second largest campus. UM reported 10,962 undergraduate and graduate students in the fa ...

(1924–1950) *

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

(1928–1959)

Membership timeline

DateFormat = yyyy ImageSize = width:800 height:auto barincrement:20 Period = from:1915 till:1959 TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal PlotArea = right:5 left:5 bottom:50 top:5 #> to display a count on left side of graph, use "left:20" to suppress the count, use "left:20"<# Colors = id:barcolor value:rgb(0.99,0.7,0.7) id:line value:black id:bg value:white id:Full value:rgb(0.742,0.727,0.852) # Use this color to denote a team that is a member in all sports id:FullxF value:rgb(0.551,0.824,0.777) # Use this color to denote a team that is a member in all sports except for football id:AssocF value:rgb(0.98,0.5,0.445) # Use this color to denote a team that is a member for football only id:AssocOS value:rgb(0.5,0.691,0.824) # Use this color to denote a team that is a member in some sports, but not all (consider identifying in legend or a footnote) id:OtherC1 value:rgb(0.996,0.996,0.699) # Use this color to denote a team that has moved to another conference id:OtherC2 value:rgb(0.988,0.703,0.383) # Use this color to denote a team that has moved to another conference where OtherC1 has already been used, to distinguish the two id:Bar1 value:rgb(0.8,0.8,0.7) id:Bar2 value:rgb(0.9,0.9,0.6) PlotData= width:15 textcolor:black shift:(5,-5) anchor:from fontsize:s bar:1 color:Full from:1915 till:1959 text:

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

(1915–1959) bar:2 color:Full from:1915 till:1959 text:

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

(1915–1959) bar:3 color:Full from:1915 till:1959 text:

Oregon Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...

(1915–1959) bar:4 color:Full from:1915 till:1959 text:

Oregon State Oregon State University (OSU) is a public land-grant, research university in Corvallis, Oregon. OSU offers more than 200 undergraduate-degree programs along with a variety of graduate and doctoral degrees. It has the 10th largest engineering col ...

(1915–1959) bar:5 color:Full from:1917 till:1959 text:

Washington State Washington (), officially the State of Washington, is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. Named for George Washington—the first U.S. president—the state was formed from the western part of the Washington ...

(1917–1959) bar:6 color:Full from:1918 till:1959 text:

Stanford Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is considere ...

(1918–1959) bar:7 color:Full from:1922 till:1924 text: USC (1922–1923, 1925–1959) bar:7 color:Full from:1925 till:1959 bar:8 color:Full from:1922 till:1959 text:

Idaho Idaho ( ) is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. To the north, it shares a small portion of the Canada–United States border with the province of British Columbia. It borders the states of Montana and Wyom ...

(1922–1959) bar:9 color:Full from:1924 till:1950 text:

Montana Montana () is a state in the Mountain West division of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota and South Dakota to the east, Wyoming to the south, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbi ...

(1924–1950) bar:10 color:Full from:1928 till:1959 text:

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

(1928–1959) ScaleMajor = gridcolor:line unit:year increment:5 start:1916 TextData = fontsize:L textcolor:black pos:(0,30) tabs:(400-center) text:^"Pacific Coast Conference membership history" # > If the chart uses more than one bar color, add a legend by selecting the appropriate fields from the following six options (use only the colors that are used in the graphic.) Leave a blank line after the end of the timeline, then add a line with the selected values from the list, separated by a space. <#

Before the crisis

Rivalries between the Pacific Coast Conference schools grew beyond athletics, with animosities around educational, financial and state rivalries. The tensions between the

and

Northwest The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sep ...

schools extended to

Edwin Pauley Edwin Wendell Pauley Sr. (January 7, 1903 – July 28, 1981) was an American businessman and political leader. Early life Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, to Elbert L. Pauley and the former Ellen Van Petten, he attended Occidental College, in nort ...

, a regent of the University of California, disliking the member universities in the Pacific Northwest enough to advocate that the California institutions leave the Pacific Coast Conference to form a "California Conference." The PCC had a history of being very strict with regards to its standards; it suspended the University of Southern California from the conference in 1924, performed a critical self-study in 1932, and a voluminous two-million-word report was compiled by

Edwin Atherton Edwin Newton Atherton (October 12, 1896 – August 31, 1944) served as a foreign service officer, Bureau of Investigation agent, private investigator, and later, appointed head of the college athletics organization, the Pacific Coast Conference i ...

in 1939. The PCC had a paid commissioner, an elaborate constitution, a formal code of conduct, and a system for reporting student-athlete eligibility. Following the submission of his report, Atherton was promptly hired as commissioner in 1940, and served until his death four years later, He was succeeded by his assistant, Victor O. Schmidt. The conference was wracked by scandal in 1951. Charges were made and confirmed that

football coach

Jim Aiken James Wilson Aiken (May 26, 1899 – October 31, 1961) was an American football player and coach of football and basketball. He served as the head football coach at the University of Akron (1936–1938), the University of Nevada (1939–1946), an ...

had violated the conference code for financial aid and athletic subsidies. After Aiken was compelled to resign, Oregon urged the PCC to look at similar abuses by UCLA football coach

Red Sanders Henry Russell "Red" Sanders (May 7, 1905 – August 14, 1958) was an American football player and coach. He was head coach at Vanderbilt University (1940–1942, 1946–1948) and the University of California at Los Angeles (1949–1957), compili ...

. The conference spent five years attempting to reform itself. In 1956, the scandal became public.

The crisis

The scandal first broke at Washington, when in January 1956, several discontented players staged a mutiny against their coach,

John Cherberg John Andrew Cherberg (October 17, 1910 – April 8, 1992) was an American politician, football coach, teacher and television executive. He served as the 13th Lieutenant Governor of Washington from 1957 to 1989, a longer tenure than any other lie ...

. After the coach was fired, the PCC followed up on charges of a slush fund. The PCC found evidence of the prohibited activities of the Greater Washington Advertising Fund run by Roscoe C. "Torchy" Torrance, and in May imposed sanctions. In March, allegations of prohibited payments made by two booster clubs associated with UCLA, the Bruin Bench and the Young Men's Club of Westwood, were published in Los Angeles newspapers. UCLA refused for ten weeks to allow PCC officials to proceed in their investigation. Finally, UCLA admitted that, "all members of the football coaching staff had, for several years, known of the unsanctioned payments to student athletes and had cooperated with the booster club members or officers, who actually administered the program by actually referring student athletes to them for such aid." The scandal thickened as a UCLA alumnus and member of the UCLA athletic advisory board blew the whistle on a secret fund for payments in violation of PCC rules to University of Southern California players, known as the Southern California Educational Foundation. This same alumnus also blew the whistle on Cal's phony work program for athletes known as the San Francisco Gridiron Club, with an extension in the Los Angeles area known as the South Seas Fund. In 1957, the conference fired Vic Schmidt, the commissioner. He had been tasked with cleaning up the conference, and had imposed sanctions on UCLA, including suspending athletes and prohibiting participation in the Rose Bowl for three years.

Aftershocks and disbandment

The first major reaction came from the University of California system. Robert Sproul, president of the University of California, along with the chancellors of Berkeley and UCLA, drafted a "Five Point Plan", emphasizing academic eligibility standards, setting the two UC campuses apart from the PCC and laying the groundwork for their departure. For Sproul the PCC dispute was not just about athletics; at stake was the ideal of a unified University of California that enjoyed statewide support. This ideal collided with aspirations of UCLA alumni who believed that Sproul's vision would always favor the Berkeley campus at the expense of the younger UCLA campus. Oregon State College president August

Leroy Strand August Leroy Strand (February 12, 1894 – April 27, 1980) was an American entomologist who served as President of Montana State University from 1937 to 1942, and as President of Oregon State University from 1942 to 1961. Life and career S ...

wrote, "The reasons for California and UCLA dropping out are as different as night and day... the significance of the whole affair was the union of Berkeley and UCLA... admissions and scholarship had nothing to do with the withdrawals . . . the marriage of this desire on the part of Berkeley with the known ambitions and necessities of its sister institution has produced a bastard that has the bard of a purebred but the innards and hair of a mongrel." The PCC was falling apart, leading to the decision to dissolve after the 1958–59 season. The PCC scandal was one of several problems during the chancellorship of Raymond B. Allen at UCLA that caused him to fall out of favor with the

Regents of the University of California The Regents of the University of California (also referred to as the Board of Regents to distinguish the board from the corporation it governs of the same name) is the governing board of the University of California (UC), a state university sy ...

. Allen was widely expected to become the next UC President, but instead, in October 1957, UC Berkeley Chancellor

Clark Kerr Clark Kerr (May 17, 1911 – December 1, 2003) was an American professor of economics and academic administrator. He was the first chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, and twelfth president of the University of California. B ...

was the Regents' unanimous choice to succeed Sproul.

New conference (AAWU)

Soon after the PCC was dissolved, five of its nine members (California, Washington, UCLA, Southern California, and Stanford) created the

Athletic Association of Western Universities The Pac-12 Conference is a collegiate athletic conference, that operates in the Western United States, participating in 24 sports at the NCAA Division I level. Its football teams compete in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS; formerly Division ...

(AAWU) for the 1959 season. While the AAWU did not negotiate an agreement with the

Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association, created by the efforts of Charles Frederick Holder and Francis F. Rowland, is the non-profit organization that has annually produced the New Year's Day Rose Parade since 1890 and the Rose Bowl since 190 ...

to have a standing contractual invitation to the Rose Bowl Game until the following year, the Tournament of Roses did choose to invite the AAWU's inaugural regular season champion to the first post-PCC Rose Bowl. After initially being blocked from admission, three of the four remaining schools would eventually join (

in 1962,

and

in 1964), but members were not required to play other members. Tensions were high between UCLA and Stanford, as Stanford had voted for UCLA's expulsion from the PCC.

was not involved in the scandals but had become noncompetitive in the PCC. Unlike Washington State, Oregon, and Oregon State, Idaho did not pursue AAWU admission, and competed as an independent before becoming a charter member of the

Big Sky Conference The Big Sky Conference (BSC) is a collegiate athletic conference affiliated with the NCAA's Division I with football competing in the Football Championship Subdivision. Member institutions are located in the western United States in the eigh ...

1963 Events January * January 1 – Bogle–Chandler case: Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation scientist Dr. Gilbert Bogle and Mrs. Margaret Chandler are found dead (presumed poisoned), in bushland near the Lane Cov ...

. Idaho retains no strong connections to its PCC past other than a continuing rivalry with Washington State; the two

land grant A land grant is a gift of real estate—land or its use privileges—made by a government or other authority as an incentive, means of enabling works, or as a reward for services to an individual, especially in return for military service. Grants ...

campuses are just eight miles (13 km) apart in the

Palouse The Palouse ( ) is a distinct geographic region of the northwestern United States, encompassing parts of north central Idaho, southeastern Washington, and, by some definitions, parts of northeast Oregon. It is a major agricultural area, prima ...

region. The AAWU eventually strengthened its bonds and added members, renaming itself the Pacific-8 Conference (Pac-8) in 1968. By 1971, most Pac-8 schools played round-robin conference football schedules, and the two Oregon schools were again playing USC and UCLA on a regular basis. The conference added WAC powers

Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...

and

Arizona State Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public research university in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, ASU is one of the largest public universities by enrollment in the ...

in 1978 and became the Pacific-10 Conference (Pac-10). On July 1, 2011, the conference added

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of t ...

from the

Big 12 The Big 12 Conference is a college athletic conference headquartered in Irving, Texas, USA. It consists of ten full-member universities. It is a member of Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for all sports. Its f ...

and

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...

from the

Mountain West The Mountain West Conference (MW) is one of the collegiate athletic conferences affiliated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) (formerly I-A). The MW officially began operations o ...

(also a former WAC member) and became the Pac-12. The Pac-12 claims the PCC's history as its own, though it operates under a separate charter.

Conference champions

The official record book of conference champions was compiled by the then acting commissioner Bernie Hammerbeck in 1959.

Men's basketball

The Pacific Coast Conference began playing basketball in the 1915–16 season. The PCC adopted a divisional format for basketball beginning with the 1922–23 season. The California schools formed the Southern Division, while the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountain schools formed the North Division. The winners of the two divisions played a best of three series to determine the PCC basketball champion. If two division teams tied, they had a one-game playoff to produce the division representative. Starting with the first NCAA tournament in 1939, the winner of the PCC divisional playoff was given the automatic berth in the NCAA tournament.

, the PCC champion that season, won the first NCAA title game. The last divisional playoff was in the 1954–55 season. After that, all teams played each other in a round robin competition. From the 1955–56 season through the 1958–59 season, the regular season conference champion was awarded the NCAA tournament berth from the PCC. In the case of a tie, a tie breaker rule was used to determine the NCAA tournament representative. * Bold indicates national champion

Football

^ Denotes PCC representative in Rose Bowl for shared conference championships *Bold denotes national champion recognition

Baseball

The PCC adopted a divisional format for baseball in 1923, with the same alignment that it used for basketball. ''*denotes Pacific Coast Conference playoff champion
''**California won the CIBA Division 1 and USC won CIBA Division 2. California won the whole division title by beating USC in the CIBA playoff * Bold indicates National Champion

Commissioners

*Herb Dana, 193x–1940 * Edwin N. Atherton, 1940–1944 *Victor O. Schmidt, 1944–1959 *Bernie Hammerbeck (acting), 1959

References

{{reflist, 2 Defunct NCAA Division I conferences Pac-12 Conference 1915 establishments in the United States 1959 disestablishments in the United States Sports leagues established in 1915 Sports leagues disestablished in 1959