Pac-12 scraps divisions starting in the 2022 college football season
Divisions are a thing of the past in the Pac-12, which announced it will no longer divide the conference into North and South starting in the 2022 college football season.
Going forward, the Pac-12 championship game will feature the two teams in the conference with the best winning percentage.
“Our goal is to place our two best teams in our Pac-12 Football Championship Game, which we believe will provide our conference with the best opportunity to optimize [College Football Playoff] invitations and ultimately win national championships,” Pac-12 Commissioner George Kliavkoff said.
“Today’s decision is an important step towards that goal and immediately increases both fan interest in, and the media value of, our Football Championship Game.”
The Pac-12 announced that the decision to end divisions was unanimous and comes on the same day the NCAA Division I Council announced it would relax the rules that required conferences to have divisions in order to have championship games.
Under the new rules, the Pac-12 Championship Game would have featured teams different than the ones that played in five of the last 11 years.
ACC and Big Ten officials have also stated their interest to scrap divisions in their respective conferences, and the SEC is reportedly seeking out a "pod" system instead of the East/West divide in future once Texas and Oklahoma join the league.
Two Pac-12 teams have qualified for the College Football Playoff: Oregon in 2014 and Washington in 2016. The conference has not won a national championship since USC defeated Oklahoma in 2004.