The Pac-12, a historic NCAA conference that for over 100 years competed at college sports’ highest level and produced some of the best female athletes in history, collapsed. Of the 12 teams, two — UCLA and USC —announced last year they will move to the Big Ten for the 2024-2025 season. This year, six other schools announced they would also depart the Pac-12 for other conferences in 2024, leaving just four schools in the once-esteemed conference. The motivating factors behind this decision are, unsurprisingly, related to football and its accompanying TV contracts, and little (if any) thought was given to the effect that conference shake-ups would have on other, less financially lucrative sports, including women’s sports. Forty-three percent of student-athletes in the NCAA are women, and only one percent of athletes play NCAA football - across three divisions. 

UCLA, USC, Oregon, and Washington’s decisions to jump ship for the Big Ten and force many of its athletes to play in coast-to-coast conferences shows a blatant disregard for student-athletes who play more than 12 regular season games yearly.

The collapse of the Pac-12 and the creation of coast-to-coast conferences will have negative consequences for women’s sports programs. Here are three reasons why:

Taxing Travel Schedule

​Athletes at any of the eight Pac-12 teams that will depart for other conferences (USC, UCLA, Washington, Oregon to the Big Ten; Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, and Utah to the Big 12) will be participating in bi-coastal conferences. Of course, the West Coast Pac-12 schools that left for the Big 10 made the most drastic change and will have the largest impact on student-athletes. As teams play 20-plus games, west-coast teams will need to make multiple trips to the Midwest and East Coast. The fact is, that managing and executing a cross-country travel schedule will create logistic nightmares and wasted time. Even with charter flights, spending that much time traveling is detrimental to student-athletes' health.

Removing the "Student" from Student-Athlete

The new schedules will create travel nightmares and diminish school and free time. Student-athletes already perform a massive balancing act between school, sports, social lives, and mental and physical health. At a time with increasing focus on mental health, this decision is a step back from progress that has been made. The lives of student-athletes are grueling as it. As travel becomes a bigger demand, managing the health and safety of student-athletes becomes more difficult.

Sidelining Programs

One of the universities currently remaining in the Pac 12, Stanford University, plays a historically crucial role in developing National Championship caliber teams and Olympic-level athletes but has previously flirted with cutting men’s and women’s Olympic sports. Yet, the soccer team produced five U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team players for this past World Cup. The U.S. Women’s National Volleyball Team has four current players from Stanford, all of whom won three national titles while in school. Stanford won the Basketball National Championship for the third time in 2021, and five active WNBA players attended the university. Softball has historically been an elite program and, in 2023, returned as a one-seed in the Women’s College World Series. Stanford is one of the country's wealthiest universities, but continuing to build pipelines could become a challenge for other programs. It is proof again that women’s sports were not prioritized in this decision, and the impacts will be far-reaching.

Ideally, the remaining Pac-12 schools, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Oregon State, and Washington State, can find a way to prioritize student-athletes outside of football. Women athletes continue to thrive despite existing as an afterthought, and their health and safety must be prioritized.