December 2, 1915: What Became the Pac-12 Conference Is Founded

December 2, 1915: The Pacific Coast Conference is founded. It will evolve into the league known as the Pac-12.

The 4 original members were the University of California, at Berkeley, usually called "Cal" for sports purposes, and "Berkeley" for everything else; the University of Oregon, at Eugene; Oregon Agricultural College, which became Oregon State University in 1961, located in Corvallis; and the University of Washington, in Seattle.

Washington State College, in Pullman, was admitted in 1917, and was renamed Washington State University in 1959. Stanford University, in Palo Alto, California, between San Francisco and San Jose, was admitted in 1918.

The University of Southern California, a.k.a. USC, in Los Angeles, was admitted in 1922. So was the University of Idaho, in Moscow, just a few miles across a State Line from Washington State. The University of Montana, in Missoula, was admitted in 1924, but left in 1950. And the University of California at Los Angeles, a.k.a. UCLA, a campus which didn't even exist until 1919, was admitted in 1928.

Scandals broke out at several schools in the 1950s, leading to the PCC's disbanding in 1959. Cal, Stanford, UCLA, USC and Washington formed the Athletic Association of Western Universities (AAWU). Washington State joined in 1962, and Oregon and Oregon State joined in 1964. Idaho decided not to join.

In 1968, the league renamed itself the Pacific-8 Conference, Pac-8. In 1978, 2 members of the Western Athletic Conference (WAC), the University of Arizona and Arizona State University, joined, making the league the Pacific-10, or Pac-10. In 2011, Colorado left the Big 12, and Utah left the Mountain West Conference, both joining the Pac-10, which became the Pac-12: "Pacific" was no longer part of the league's official name.

From its inception in 1902 until 2001, the Rose Bowl in the Los Angeles suburb of Pasadena, California usually invited the top team on the West Coast to participate. This included the champions of the PCC (1916-59), the AAWU (1960-68), the Pac-8 (1969-78) and the Pac-10 (1979-2001). With the coming of the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) and then the National Championship Playoff (NCP), the Rose Bowl has not always featured a Pac-12 team, but it does seem to prefer one.

USC have been the league's representative in the Rose Bowl 34 times, Stanford 15, Washington 14, UCLA 12, Cal and Oregon 8 each, Washington State 4, Oregon State 3, Arizona State 2 and Utah 1. Arizona and Colorado have never played in the Rose Bowl. The Rose Bowls of 2002, 2005, 2011, 2018 and 2021 did not feature a Pac-12 team. (UPDATE: In 2023, Utah reached a 2nd Rose Bowl. In 2024, there was no Pac-12 team in the game.)

The Pac-12 has won more NCAA Championships across the sports spectrum than any other league. USC became the dominant school in football. In men's basketball, it was UCLA, but Arizona have done better in recent times. USC and Arizona State have been dominant in baseball, UCLA and Oregon in track, Stanford in women's basketball and soccer. 

The rivalries are intense: USC and UCLA; Cal and Stanford, "The Big Game"; Oregon and Oregon State, "The Civil War"; Washington and Washington State, "The Apple Cup"; and Arizona and Arizona State, "The Duel in the Desert."

On June 30, 2022, UCLA and USC announced plans to leave the Pac-12 for the Big Ten Conference, starting in 2024. For old-time Pac-8/10/12 fans, this must have seemed like what New England baseball fans felt when they saw Red Sox heroes Wade Boggs, Roger Clemens and Johnny Damon go to the New York Yankees. It is feared that this move will break the Pac-12.

UPDATE: In 2023, Colorado announced it would leave the Pac-12, and rejoin the Big 12. This was, almost immediately, followed by Arizona, Arizona State and Utah also heading for the Big 12, and Oregon and Washington bolting for the Big Ten. And, in what is, at least in terms of names, the most absurd move, Cal and Stanford announced they were joining the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC).

As of December 2, 2023, the Pac-12 appears to be going into the 2024-25 schoolyear with just 2 members: Oregon State and Washington State. The NCAA has announced that it has given the Pac-12 until 2026 to have enough members to meet its bylaws. A merger with the WAC or the Mountain West is possible.

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December 2, 1915 was a Thursday. Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. Professional basketball barely existed. And the hockey season was about to start. So there were no scores on this historic day.

March 23, 1963: Loyola vs. Cincinnati

March 23, 1963: The Final of the NCAA men's basketball tournament is held at Freedom Hall in Louisville. It is the culmination of a tournament with heavy overtones of the Civil Rights Movement.

Mississippi State University had won the Southeastern Conference Championship, earning them a berth into the NCAA Tournament. The Bulldogs were all-white, as Mississippi colleges were still racially segregated. There was an "unwritten law" that no team from the State could play an integrated team. MSU coach James "Babe" McCarthy defied this, and traveled to East Lansing, Michigan, to Jenison Field House on the campus of Michigan State University. There, they played Loyola University Chicago (there is no "of" in their name), and lost, 61-51.

This Loyola should not be confused with Loyola University Maryland in Baltimore, whose teams are called the Greyhounds; Loyola University New Orleans, the Wolf Pack; or Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, the Lions. They are all named for Íñigo López de Oñaz y Loyola, a Spanish theologian who, in 1541, founded the Society of Jesus, a.k.a. the Jesuits, with Peter Faber and Francis Xavier. He is better known by his Latin name, St. Ignatius of Loyola.

The Loyola Ramblers did not stop there. Coached by George Ireland, they won their 1st 21 games, before losing away to Bowling Green. They won 3 more games before losing their regular-season finale to Wichita State at the Chicago Stadium. In the Tournament's Round of 32, they beat Tennessee Tech on the Northwestern campus in Evanston, Illinois. In the Round of 16, they beat Mississippi State at East Lansing. In the Quarterfinal, they beat Illinois at East Lansing. And in the Semifinal, they beat Duke at Freedom Hall.

In the Final, their opponents were the University of Cincinnati, the 2-time defending National Champions. In 1959 and 1960, with Oscar Robertson, the reached what's now known as the Final Four. In 1961, with new head coach Ed Jucker, they reached the Final, and dethroned defending Champions Ohio State, who had Jerry Lucas and John Havlicek coming back. In 1962, they beat Ohio State in the Final again.

In 1963, they were 25-1 going into the Final, to Loyola's 28-2. Like Loyola, they had lost to Wichita State, by 1 point in Wichita. That Wichita State team had Nate Bowman and Dave Stallworth, both of whom would be drafted by the New York Knicks, and were still with them when they won the 1970 NBA Championship. But in 1962-63, Wichita State only went 19-8, finishing 2nd in the Missouri Valley Conference to Cincinnati, did not get invited to the NCAA Tournament, and crashed out of the NIT in the 1st Round.

In the Semifinal, Cincinnati beat Oregon State, which featured Terry Baker, who, 4 months earlier, had won the Heisman Trophy as OSU's quarterback; and, 3 months earlier, had been named Sports Illustrated magazine's Sportsman of the Year, citing his status as a scholar-athlete. And this was before March 1963, when he became the 1st Heisman Trophy winner to also play in the Final Four. He remains the only one.

Terry Baker

In that 1963 Final, Loyola started 4 black players, the 1st team ever to do so: Center Les Hunter, forwards Jerry Harkness and Vic Rouse, and guard Ron Miller. Only guard Jack Egan was white.

"The unspoken rule then was two blacks at home, if you had to play them, and one on the road," Ireland said in a 1987 interview. "I played four, and rarely substituted." In other words, he didn't care about an unspoken rule, only written rules.

On the question of substitutions: If both teams had had their choice, all 10 starters would have played the entire game. All 5 of Loyola's did. In Cincinnati's case, center George Wilson got into foul trouble, and sat out for 4 minutes. Guard Larry Shingleton was put in, and forward Dale Heidotting took over the center role. The rest played the whole game: Heidotting and fellow forward Ron Bonham, and guards Tom Thacker and Tony Yates.

Wilson, Thacker and Yates were also black. This marked the 1st time that over half the players in the NCAA Final were black -- in this case, 7 out of 10. So, whichever team won, it would be a step forward in civil rights in basketball: Fans were used to black stars, but not black teams. To borrow the words of playwright Arthur Miller (Jewish, rather than black), "Attention must be paid."

Freedom Hall

Harkness was the Ramblers' best player. He was shut out from the field by the Bearcats' Tony Yates and Tom Thacker for better than 35 minutes. But he reeled off 9 of his 14 points in the last 5 minutes of regulation, due to both of them getting into foul trouble and having to back off a little.

With 12 seconds left in regulation, Shingleton went to the foul line with the Bearcats up, 53-52. He made the 1st free throw, but missed the 2nd. Hunter grabbed the rebound, and passed to Harkness, who scored to send the game to overtime, 54-54.

There was no 3-point shot available at the time. There was no shot clock in college basketball then, either. This turned out to be critical. With 1:21 left, the game was tied at 58-58, when Loyola won a tip. They passed the ball around, waiting for their chance to take the last shot. Harkness drove, but couldn't get a shot, and flipped the ball to Hunter. He missed, but Rouse flicked the ball into the net as the gun sounded. Final score: Loyola 60, Cincinnati 58.

This was the 1st time that an NCAA Tournament Final had been decided on a last-second shot, a "buzzer-beater." It was also the 1st time that a buzzer-beater had sent an NCAA Tournament Final to overtime.

At the end of the year, the Chicago Bears won the NFL Championship. That made Chicago the 1st city to win both the NFL Championship and the NCAA Basketball Tournament in the same calendar year. It's only happened once since, in 2018, with the Super Bowl by then played in February: Philadelphia did it with the Eagles and Villanova.

Vic Rouse died in 1999, Jim Reardon and head coach George Ireland in 2001, Les Hunter in 2020, Jerry Harkness in 2021. As of March 23, 2022, 5 members of the 1963 Loyola team are still alive: Jack Egan, Chuck Wood, Dan Connaughton, Rich Rochelle and Ron Miller.

For all of the rich history of basketball in the City of Chicago, and in the State of Illinois, this remains the only time that a team from that City or that State has won the NCAA Championship. DePaul University, on Chicago's North Side, made the Final Four under head coach Ray Meyer in 1943, and again in 1979 with Meyer still there. Bradley University, of Peoria, made the NCAA Final in 1950 and 1954, losing the former to City College of New York and the latter to La Salle University of Philadelphia. The University of Illinois made it all the way to the Final in 2005, but lost to North Carolina.

And Loyola made it back to the Final Four in 2018, becoming a national story not just because of their many upsets, but for their team chaplain, Sister Jean Schmidt. With some irony, she had a Master's degree from a Loyola University, but it was from Marymount, the one in Los Angeles. In 1963, she was teaching at a women's Catholic school in Chicago, Mundelein College. In 1991, Mundelein was merged with Loyola University Chicago. In 1994, she became the basketball program's chaplain. In 2018, she was 98 years old, and became a national media figure. In 2022, Loyola qualified for the NCAA Tournament again, and she was in attendance at age 102.

UPDATE: Dan Connaughton died in 2024. Sister Jean died in 2025.

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March 23, 1963 was a Saturday. Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. There was 1 game played in the NBA: The Syracuse Nationals beat the Cincinnati Royals, 121-117 at the Onondaga County War Memorial (now the Upstate Medical University Arena) in Syracuse.

There were 2 games played in the NHL. The Montreal Canadiens and the Chicago Black Hawks played to a 4-4 tie at the Montreal Forum. And the Detroit Red Wings beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 2-1 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. The New York Rangers and the Boston Bruins were not scheduled.

And in English soccer, Arsenal played Lancashire team Blackburn Rovers, and won, 3-1 at the Arsenal Stadium, a.k.a. Highbury, in North London.