The Pac-12 Conference, which will drop down to two members this summer, will no longer be an “autonomous conference,” the NCAA Division I Board of Directors determined on Monday, effective Aug. 2. It will instead be classified as a “nonautonomous FBS conference” like the Group of 5.
The board created new governance thresholds for conferences that fall below membership requirements. As a result, the Pac-12 will lose representation on the Board of Directors. It will retain representation and voting rights on the Division I Council, the Football Oversight Committee and the Division I Student-Athlete Advisory Committee when applicable, but the weight of its Council vote will be diminished.
Multi-sport conferences are required to have at least eight members, but in the event they drop below that number, they are allowed a two-year grace period to get back up. The Pac-12 will lose 10 schools to the Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC this summer, leaving only Oregon State and Washington State. The board’s determinations on Monday apply to conferences in that grace period.
In 2014, the board created a new “autonomy” model, granting the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC the ability to make some of their own rules together, which happened the next year with full cost-of-attendance scholarships. The autonomy group became colloquially known as the “Power 5″ and regularly held its own meetings, but didn’t do much else legislatively with that autonomy power. The other five FBS conferences became known as the Group of 5, with most of those schools eventually adding cost of attendance as well.
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The two-member Pac-12 will now be a part of that lower group, although it will not hold official conference games for the next two years. Instead, Oregon State and Washington State have agreed to play most of their sports in the Mountain West (including football for 2024) and West Coast Conference (including basketball for the next two years), but football will not be eligible for Mountain West championships or standings. Oregon State baseball will play an independent schedule.
After that, the future is uncertain. The Pac-12 and Mountain West signed an agreement in the fall to work in good faith to merge by the 2025-26 or 2026-27 seasons, with no cost if the Pac-12 absorbs every MWC school, or a cost of upwards of $137.5 million if it takes some but not all MWC schools. But Oregon State and Washington State are focused first on joining an autonomous conference, and the uncertainty surrounding the future of college sports could spark another upheaval.
The College Football Playoff in November also determined that conferences must have at least eight members in order to be eligible for an automatic qualifying spot in the 12-team field.
Although Oregon State and Washington State have pledged to continue to spend and compete at a Power 5 level, Monday’s news of losing autonomy status was ultimately not a surprise.
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