Opinion: In the university’s final year with the Pac-12, UO students should savor the geographic convenience and longstanding traditions of the conference before it’s too late.  
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The University of Oregon has begun what will likely be remembered as a historic year of collegiate athletics: the end of the school’s tenure with the storied Pac-12 conference.
On Aug. 4, the university officially announced its move to the Big Ten Conference. Many other universities in the Pac-12 will be joining the Big Ten as well, and by the time next school year rolls around, Ducks sports as Oregon students currently know it will be vastly different.
Since its early roots as the Pacific Coast Conference in 1915, the dynamics of the Pac-12 have been beneficial to both student-athletes and student fans. For athletes, travel within the conference was short, and the geographic proximity of teams within the Pac-12 created great rivalries and traditions for fans and students alike.
In the university’s press release statement on the conference switch, President Scholz stated that UO will try to maintain said traditions.
“In coming years, the UO will prioritize the long-held traditions, including competition across all sports with Oregon State University,” Scholz said.
However, without the conference-standing implications of the annual UO vs. Oregon State games, the history and meaning behind the rivalry will fade. Similarly, other great geographic Pac-12 traditions and rivalries will be lost as well, such as the tree chopping in the annual Big Game between Stanford and Cal or the Apple Cup rivalry between Washington and Washington State.
Not to mention, the shift away from geographic conferences will have lasting negative effects on UO’s student-athletes.
Following the announcement of Oregon’s move to the Big Ten, many UO softball players took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to express their discontent with the added travel and stress of the move.
“Tired of being an overlooked sport,” KK Humphrieys, a UO softball infielder, tweeted. “It’s an upsetting day for the Pac-12 lovers and people who love the sanity of student athletes’ mental health.”
Instead of playing teams in the neighboring states of Washington and California, Oregon teams will travel as far as New Jersey and Maryland for conference games. Travel times will grow, and the rigorous schedule for student-athletes will become tougher.
A key driver behind many schools’ decision to leave the Pac-12 was to gain bigger television and media deals for the programs.
According to the LA Times, the Big Ten grossed $768 million in revenue during the 2019-20 season, while the Pac-12 only grossed $533 million. University athletic programs are out for monetary gain, yet once again, there is little prioritization for athletes’ academic success and mental well-being.
As the final year of the Pac-12 now rolls around, I encourage students to savor and celebrate the amazing collegiate sports atmosphere the conference has created.
Many of collegiate sports’ greatest moments have occurred in Pac-12 games, not to mention the myriad of this country’s most poignant and influential athletes that have gone through the conference, including Tiger Woods, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Alex Morgan, Steve Prefontaine and many more.
The Pac-12 is labeled the “Conference of Champions,” as it has won more NCAA championships than any other conference in collegiate athletics history. The Pac-12 conference also has the most Olympic athletes and medal-winners of any conference in the history of the Olympic games.
While a large part of the conference’s beauty was about convenience — games just a few hours away create optimal travel for fans and athletes — the Pac-12 also created an incredibly special college sports environment.
By fall 2024, when the university begins its time in the Big Ten conference, there will no longer be students road-tripping in droves to cheer for their schools at away games, and the legendary rivalries and traditions will be lost.
Conferences built upon the logical geographic proximity of schools will always benefit student-athletes and their fans, and UO’s decision to remove itself from the Pac-12 should be continuously questioned and criticized.