Pacific Coast Conference
The Pacific Coast Conference was a collegiate athletic conference in the United States which existed from 1915 to 1959. Though the Pac-12 Conference claims the PCC's history as part of its own, with eight of the ten PCC members in the Pac-12 for many years, 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, the University of Washington, the University of Oregon, and Oregon Agricultural College.
Conference members
- University of California, Berkeley
- University of Oregon
- Oregon State College
- University of Washington
- Washington State College
- Stanford University
- University of Idaho
- University of Southern California
- University of Montana
- University of California, Los Angeles
Membership timeline
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id:Full value:rgb # Use this color to denote a team that is a member in all sports
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id:AssocOS value:rgb # Use this color to denote a team that is a member in some sports, but not all
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bar:1 color:Full from:12/02/1915 till:08/02/2024 text:California
bar:1 color:OtherC1 from:08/02/2024 till:end text:ACC
bar:2 color:Full from:12/02/1915 till:08/02/2024 text:Washington
bar:2 color:OtherC1 from:08/02/2024 till:end text:Big Ten
bar:3 color:Full from:12/02/1915 till:06/30/1959 text:Oregon
bar:3 color:OtherC1 from:07/01/1959 till:06/30/1964 text:Independent
bar:3 color:Full from:07/01/1964 till:08/02/2024
bar:3 color:OtherC1 from:08/02/2024 till:end text:Big Ten
bar:4 color:Full from:12/02/1915 till:06/30/1959 text:Oregon State
bar:4 color:OtherC1 from:07/01/1959 till:06/30/1964 text:Independent
bar:4 color:Full from:07/01/1964 till:end
bar:5 color:OtherC1 from:12/02/1915 till:06/30/1917 text:Ind.
bar:5 shift: color:Full from:07/01/1917 till:06/30/1959 text:Washington State
bar:5 color:OtherC1 from:07/01/1959 till:06/30/1962 text:Indep.
bar:5 color:Full from:07/01/1962 till:end
bar:6 color:OtherC1 from:12/02/1915 till:06/30/1918 text:Ind.
bar:6 color:Full from:07/01/1918 till:end text:Stanford
bar:6 color:OtherC1 from:08/02/2024 till:end text:ACC
bar:7 color:OtherC1 from:12/02/1915 till:06/30/1922 text:Indep.
bar:7 color:Full from:07/01/1922 till:08/02/2024 text:USC
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bar:8 color:OtherC1 from:12/02/1915 till:06/30/1922 text:Indep.
bar:8 color:Full from:07/01/1922 till:06/30/1959 text:Idaho
bar:8 color:OtherC1 from:07/01/1959 till:06/30/1963 text:Indep.
bar:8 color:OtherC2 from:07/01/1963 till:06/30/1996 text:Big Sky
bar:8 color:OtherC1 from:07/01/1996 till:06/30/2005 text:Big West
bar:8 color:OtherC2 from:07/01/2005 till:06/30/2014 text:WAC
bar:8 color:OtherC1 from:07/01/2014 till:end text:Big Sky
bar:9 color:OtherC1 from:12/02/1915 till:06/30/1924 text:Independent
bar:9 color:Full from:07/01/1924 till:06/30/1950 text:Montana
bar:9 shift: color:OtherC1 from:07/01/1950 till:06/30/1951 text:Indep.
bar:9 color:OtherC2 from:07/01/1951 till:06/30/1962 text:Skyline
bar:9 shift: color:OtherC1 from:07/01/1962 till:06/30/1963 text:Indep.
bar:9 color:OtherC2 from:07/01/1963 till:end text:Big Sky
bar:10 color:OtherC1 from:12/02/1915 till:06/30/1919 text:Indep.
bar:10 color:OtherC2 from:07/01/1919 till:06/30/1928 text:SCIAC
bar:10 color:Full from:07/01/1928 till:08/02/2024 text:UCLA
bar:10 color:OtherC1 from:08/02/2024 till:end text:Big Ten
bar:N color:Bar1 from:12/02/1915 till:06/30/1959 text:Pacific Coast Conference
bar:N color:Bar2 from:07/01/1959 till:06/30/1968 text:AAWU
bar:N color:Bar1 from:07/01/1968 till:06/30/1978 text:Pacific-8
bar:N color:Bar2 from:07/01/1978 till:06/30/2011 text:Pacific-10
bar:N color:Bar1 from:07/01/2011 till:08/01/2024 text:Pac-12
bar:N color:Bar2 from:08/02/2024 till:08/01/2030 text:Other
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text:^"PCC membership history"
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History
Formation
The Pacific Coast Conference was formed during the annual meeting of the Northwest Conference on December 2, 1915, at the Imperial Hotel in Portland, Oregon.During these sessions the University of California sought to join with the six Northwest schools. The Golden Bears had recently returned to the American game after a decade playing rugby and hoped to expand their competition in football. Their 1915 team had scheduled and played two games versus Washington one month earlier.
Also at issue was the Freshman Rule, which barred first-year students from athletic eligibility. California had adopted the rule while their tradition rival Stanford had not, disrupting their annual competition. In the Northwest, Washington supported adopting the Freshman Rule while Idaho and Whitman, with much smaller student bodies, required freshmen to fill out their teams.
After long discussion, California's proposal to join with the Northwest Conference schools was turned down and the Northwest Conference retained freshman eligibility.
Late that evening, Washington and California's representatives held a meeting with Oregon in order to persuade them into a scheduling agreement between the three large state universities, adopting the Freshman Rule. Oregon agreed, on the condition that the Oregon Agricultural College was admitted as well. OAC agreed, on the condition that the Washington Agricultural College would be admitted if and when they later applied.
Thus the Pacific Coast Conference was formed between California, Washington, Oregon, and Oregon Agricultural. The new conference adopted the Freshman Rule, and Dean Arthur R. Priest of Washington was elected as the organization's first president.
Washington and the Oregon schools retained their membership in the Northwest Conference, maintaining a dual-conference agreement that would last until the collapse of the old Northwest Conference in 1925.
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 California and Northwest schools extended to Edwin Pauley, 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 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.
Montana departed the conference in 1950 to join the Skyline Eight.
The conference was wracked by scandal in 1951. Charges were made and confirmed that University of Oregon football coach Jim Aiken 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. 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 football coach, John Cherberg. 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.