Pacific Coast Conference The Pacific Coast Conference ( PCC ) was a college athletic conference in the United States which existed from 1915 to 1959 . Though the Pacific - 12 Conference ( Pac - 12 ) claims the PCC ' s history as part of its own , the older league had a completely different charter and was disbanded in 1959 due to a major crisis and scandal . The name Pacific Coast Conference is now used by a San Diego area community college league established in 1982 . Established on December 2 , 1915 , its charter members were the University of California , Berkeley , the University of Washington , the University of Oregon , and Oregon Agricultural College ( now Oregon State University ) . Before the crisis . Many people think of the Pac - 12 today as a collection of six regional rivalries , but this fails to take into account the other campus animosities and state rivalries which defined the Pacific Coast Conference . There were tensions between California and the Northwest schools . Edwin Pauley , a regent of the University of California , disliked the member universities in the Pacific Northwest and advocated that the California institutions leave the Pacific Coast Conference to form a " California Conference . " Among other complaints , he disdained the quality of education in the Oregon and Washington schools . Pauley felt that University of California campuses deserved to play against colleges with comparably high academic standards . 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 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 . Despite this , 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 in Washington , when in January 1956 , several discontented players staged a mutiny against their coach . After the coach was fired , the PCC followed up on charges of a slush fund . The PCC found evidence of the illegal activities of the Greater Washington Advertising Fund run by Roscoe C . " Torchy " Torrance , and in May imposed sanctions . In March , allegations of illegal 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 illegal payments to Southern Cal 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 . 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 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 . " By 1957 the conference had fallen apart , leading to the decision to dissolve in 1959 . Soon after the PCC was dissolved , five of its former members ( California , Washington , UCLA , Southern Cal , and Stanford ) created the Athletic Association of Western Universities . The new grouping inherited the PCC ' s automatic bid in the Rose Bowl . After initially being blocked from admission , three of the four remaining schools would eventually join ( Washington State in 1962 , Oregon and Oregon State 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 . Idaho , which was not involved in the scandals but had become noncompetitive in the PCC , was also barred from AAWU admittance in 1959 . 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 in 1963 . Idaho retains no strong connections to its PCC past , other than a continuing rivalry with neighboring Washington State ; the two land grant campuses are just eight miles ( 13 km ) apart on the Palouse . The AAWU eventually strengthened its bonds and became the Pacific - 8 Conference ( Pac - 8 ) , renaming itself 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 and Arizona State in 1978 and became the Pacific - 10 Conference ( Pac - 10 ) . On July 1 , 2011 , the conference added Colorado from the Big 12 and Utah from the Mountain West ( 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 . Men ' s basketball . The Pacific Coast Conference began playing basketball in the 1915 - 16 season . The PCC was split into North and South Divisions for basketball beginning with the 1922 - 23 season . The winners of the two divisions would play a best of three series of games to determine the PCC basketball champion . If two division teams tied , they would have a one game playoff to produce the division representative . Starting with the first NCAA Men ' s Basketball Championship in 1939 , the winner of the PCC divisional playoff was given the automatic berth in the NCAA tournament . Oregon , the 1939 PCC champion , won the championship game in the 1939 NCAA Men ' s Division I Basketball Tournament . The last divisional playoff was in the 1954 - 55 season . After that , there was no divisional play and 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 . Football . " * Denotes PCC representative in Rose Bowl for shared conference championships < br > Co - champions vs Rose Bowl See page 137 of Pac - 10 Handbook for explanation " Bold Denotes National Champion recognition Baseball . " * denotes Pacific Coast Conference playoff champion " < br > " * * California won the CIBA Division 1 and USC won Division " < br > " 2 . Cal defeated USC in a playfoff for the CIBA title . " < br > " Bold indicates National Champion "