The
Pac-12 Conference is a collegiate
athletic conference that operates in the
Western United States. It participates in 22 NCAA sports in the
NCAA's
Division I; its
football teams compete in the
Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS; formerly Division I-A), the higher of two levels of NCAA Division I football competition. The conference's 12 members are located in Arizona, California, Colorado, Oregon, Utah, and Washington. They include each state's flagship public university, four additional public universities, and two private research universities. The conference was created after the disbanding of the Pacific Coast Conference (PCC), whose principal members founded the
Athletic Association of Western Universities (
AAWU) in 1959, and went by the names
Big Five,
Big Six,
Pacific-8,
Pacific-10. It became the Pac-12 in 2011 with the addition of the University of Colorado and the University of Utah.