NCAA Division I collegiate athletic conference in the western United States
"Pacific Coast Athletic Association" redirects here. For the San Diego area community college athletic conference, see Pacific Coast Athletic Conference.
The Big West Conference (BWC) is an American collegiate athletic conference whose member institutions participate in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Division I. The conference was originally formed on July 1, 1969, as the Pacific Coast Athletic Association (PCAA), and in 1988 was renamed the Big West Conference. The conference stopped sponsoring college football after the 2000 season.
Among the conference's 11 member institutions, 10 are located in California (nine in Southern California alone), and one is located in Hawaii (though the Hawaii member is leaving for the Mountain West Conference, effective July 1, 2026). All of the current schools are public universities, with the California schools evenly split between the California State University and the University of California systems. In addition, one affiliate member plays two sports in the BWC not sponsored by its home conference.
Big West Conference Members locations – Future Member
Pacific Coast Athletic Association
The Big West Conference was formed in June 1968 as the Pacific Coast Athletic Association.[1] The five original charter members were Fresno State, San Jose State, UC Santa Barbara, San Diego State, and Long Beach State.[1] Two other schools, Cal State Los Angeles and the University of the Pacific, were also considered but they declined at that time to pursue membership.[2] The newly formed conference had several meetings to set up its governance, which was confirmed in October 1968 on the campus of UC Santa Barbara.[3] Before the league started play, Cal State Los Angeles joined as a full member and the University of the Pacific joined for football only, becoming a full member itself two years later.[4][5] The conference itself lists July 1, 1969, as its founding date, with the seven institutions beginning conference play that fall.[6][7]
Evolution
Since its inception as the Pacific Coast Athletic Association, the conference has seen many changes. Utah State was the first institution outside California to join the conference in 1978.[8] This opened the floodgates for many other schools to affiliate with the PCAA; notable schools include UNLV, Nevada, Louisiana Tech, Boise State, and football-only members, such as Southwestern Louisiana and Arkansas State.
In 1983, the PCAA became the first western conference to introduce women's athletic programs, allowing female student-athletes to compete at the same level as their male counterparts. This proved vital for Hawaii as their only participation in the conference was for their women's sports.
However, many universities left to join conferences that were perceived as more well-known, such as the Western Athletic Conference or the Mountain West Conference, while others did not see the benefit of travel since historically many of the teams have been California-based.
From the departures of Idaho and Utah State in 2005 until the arrival of Hawaii in 2012, all members were based in California, reducing the cost and travel time between the universities. When Hawaii joined, it agreed to help defray a portion of travel costs to that state for the league's California members.
In 2011, San Diego State University had initially agreed to move all sports except football (Big East) to the Big West along with Hawai'i by 2013.[9] However, when the Big East decided to no longer sponsor football for the 2013 season, SDSU backed out of their agreement with the Big West, electing to remain a member with the Mountain West instead.
Upon numerous conference shifts spurred from the announcement that UCLA and USC of the Pac-12 were to move to Big 10, a domino effect occurred, ultimately resulting in both Hawai'i and UC Davis announcing their move to the Mountain West effective the 2026 school year. This would leave the Big West with 9 teams, and with the member universities hoping to keep the conference at 11 teams, invited both California Baptist University and Utah Valley University to join the conference by the 2026 school year. Both institutions have since announced their respective intentions to join the conference, marking it the first time since 2013 that a private university will compete in the Big West, and the first time since 2005 that the Big West will have a member in the continental U.S. outside of California. Later in June, Sacramento State announced it's intention to join the Big West in all sports except football, effective by the 2026 school year, where they will join alongside Cal Baptist and Utah Valley. On September 3, 2025, UC San Diego formally accepted an invite to the West Coast Conference for the 2027-28 season after Gonzaga announced their departure to the rebuilt Pac-12 for the 2026-27 season earlier that year.[10]
There have been no fewer than 25 full and associate members in the conference's history, while only two of the original seven charter members remain (Long Beach State and UC Santa Barbara, with only Long Beach State's membership being continuous).
The change to the Big West
The logo of the Big West from 2000 to 2021
Effective July 1, 1988, the Pacific Coast Athletic Association changed its name to the Big West Conference.[7] With such schools as Utah State, UNLV, Nevada, New Mexico State, and Hawaii now in the fold, the name change was more representative of its member institutions.[7] In addition, the conference had signed a contract with ESPN to have its men's basketball games telecast as the third game of a triple header known as Big Monday - the other conferences being featured were the Big East and the Big Ten so the name Big West fit the theme.[12]
↑ Then Division II, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo was an affiliate member of the Big West in women's volleyball from 1984–85 to 1989–90.
↑ Before becoming a full member, Bakersfield had been a Big West affiliate in beach volleyball since the 2015–16 school year.
↑ Long Beach State fully rebranded its athletic program as Beach effective in the 2020–21 school year, after transitioning from its former nickname of 49ers over several years. The baseball team continues to use the nickname Dirtbags, which it had adopted in the 49ers era.
↑ UC San Diego first joined the Big West as a men's volleyball affiliate in 2017. It added women's water polo to its BWC membership in 2019.
↑ UC Santa Barbara joined the Big West when it was founded in 1969, left to become an independent after the 1973–74 school year, then rejoined the conference effective the 1976–77 school year.
↑ Hawaii will leave the Big West to join the Mountain West Conference as a full member in 2026, though they will remain an affiliate member for men's swimming and diving, men's volleyball, beach volleyball, and women's water polo. [18]
↑ Hawaii was a full member of the Big West in women's sports from 1984–85 to 1995–96; while the men's sports were a full member of the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) during that tenure.
↑ The Hawaii beach volleyball team is officially Rainbow Wahine, but more commonly uses the nickname BeachBows.
↑ Cal Baptist will pay a $1.2 million exit fee to the WAC. The university will be the first private university to compete in the Big West since Pacific left in 2013.
↑ Before becoming a full member, Sacramento State had been a Big West affiliate in various sports dating back to 1996. These sports included:
baseball between the 1996–97 and 2001–02 school years
↑ Sacramento State men's soccer joined the Big West Conference in the 2012 fall season (2012–13 school year) and beach volleyball followed for the 2016 spring season (2015–16 school year). They will become full members in the 2026-27 season.[27][28]
↑ Grand Canyon's for-profit status is disputed. The U.S. Department of Education treats it as a for-profit institution, but the Internal Revenue Service, the NCAA, and the state of Arizona consider it a nonprofit.
↑ Includes online students. Current on-campus enrollment is about 25,300.
↑ Though Grand Canyon was initially set to compete in both men and women's swimming and diving in 2025, upon their early admission into the Mountain West, they moved their women's team to that conference.
↑ While technically the school has been a Big West member in all sports since 2012, this will be their first year as an affiliate member.
Former members
Many of the former members of the Big West are now members of the Western Athletic Conference or the Mountain West Conference. Of the nine schools that were in the WAC before its early-2010s realignment, only Hawaii had not spent some time in the Big West as a football participant – it was a Big West member only in women's sports. Of the former members, Cal State Los Angeles is the only team that reverted to Division II level.
School names and nicknames reflect those used by the institutions when they were Big West members. One school has changed its name (Southwestern Louisiana, now branded athletically as Louisiana and also known as Louisiana–Lafayette) and another its nickname (Arkansas State, from Indians to Red Wolves).
↑ The UNLV campus lies outside the Las Vegas city limits in the unincorporated community of Paradise. The U.S. Postal Service considers all unincorporated areas in the Las Vegas Valley to have a Las Vegas address.
↑ Arkansas State joined the Big West for football in the 1993 fall season (1993–94 school year), left to become an independent after the 1995 fall season (–96 school year, then re-joined in 1999, only to leave again after the 2000 fall season (2000–01 school year).
Full membersFull members (non-football)Assoc. members (football only)Assoc. member (Other sports)OtherConferenceOtherConference
Notes
San Diego State played football as an independent for the 1976 and 1977 seasons before leaving the Big West Conference in 1978.
UC Santa Barbara was an independent from 1974–75 to 1975–76.
Cal State Fullerton played football as an independent for the 1992 season and dropped football entirely the following year.
Louisiana Tech, Northern Illinois, Southwestern Louisiana, and Arkansas State joined the Big West for a short-lived football consortium from 1993 to 1995.
Arkansas State played football as an independent from 1996 to 1998 and later rejoined the Big West for football during the 1999 and 2000 seasons.
Sports
The Big West Conference currently sponsors 21 NCAA sports, with men's and women's swimming & diving the newest additions for the 2024–25 school year.[29] The Big West is considered a mid-major conference, the term itself coined in 1977.
In baseball, Cal State Fullerton has won four College World Series titles with national championships in 1979, 1984, 1995, and 2004.[30] In addition, Long Beach State and UC Irvine have made multiple appearances in the College World Series. The Big West is the only existing mid-major conference to have multiple teams make the College World Series in the same year, with Cal State Fullerton and Fresno State both making it in 1988, Long Beach State and Fresno in 1991, and Fullerton and UC Irvine in 2007. Fullerton also has a national championship in softball, winning in 1986. Hawai'i joined the conference in women's sports only between 1984 and 1996, and won the 1987 NCAA women's volleyball title. Long Beach State has won three NCAA women's volleyball titles as a part of Big West Conference women's volleyball, with national championships in 1989, 1993, and 1998. Misty May-Treanor led the 49ers (now known as Beach) to a 36–0 record en route to the program's most recent title. UC Santa Barbara was the NCAA men's soccer runner-up in 2004, losing the national championship match to Indiana on penalty kicks. The Gauchos returned to the College Cup in 2006 and won the national championship.
Former Big West members UNLV and Pacific won national championships while part of the conference. The UNLV Runnin' Rebels men's basketball team won the 1990 NCAA tournament championship after routing Duke 103–73 in the national title game. UNLV was undefeated during the 1991 NCAA men's basketball season before falling to Duke in the final four. The Runnin' Rebels during this era are widely considered one of the best college basketball teams of all time. The Pacific Tigers women's volleyball team won back-to-back national championships in 1985 and 1986.
The Big West did not sponsor men's volleyball or men's water polo, but it was the primary conference affiliation of several schools that compete in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation for these sports, respectively. In NCAA men's volleyball, UC Irvine has established itself as one of the nation's most elite programs, winning four national championships in 2007, 2009, 2012, and 2013. Long Beach State also won men's national volleyball titles in 1991, 2018, 2019, and 2025, three while in the Big West. Hawai'i also won men's national volleyball titles in 2021 and 2022. In NCAA men's water polo, UC Irvine won three national championships in 1970, 1982, and 1989. UC Santa Barbara also won a men's water polo title in 1979.
On May 31, 2016, the Big West announced the conference would sponsor men's volleyball as its 18th sport, with five Big West schools leaving the MPSF to establish the new men's volleyball league. Men's volleyball is the third of four sports in which the MPSF has recently seen a mass exodus of teams to join an existing conference in a newly sponsored sport, with men's soccer, men's water polo, and women's lacrosse as the others. The men's volleyball membership includes core Big West members Cal State Northridge, Long Beach State, Hawaii, UC Irvine, and UC Santa Barbara. UC San Diego joined as an affiliate to bring the league to the NCAA minimum requirement of 6 teams to receive an automatic bid for the NCAA tournament.
Big West Commissioner Dennis Farrell explained that adding UC San Diego was not an indicator UC San Diego would be added to the Big West Conference as a full member. UC San Diego had recently passed a bill to move all their sports to Division I and was looking for an invite from the Big West Conference. UC San Diego has long competed at the Division I level in men's volleyball; the NCAA conducts a single national championship open to all Division I and II members, and scholarship limits in the sport are the same in both divisions. The Big West regular season for men's volleyball will be a double round-robin, with each team playing the others once at home and once on the road. The Big West Tournament will have all six teams participate in single-elimination rounds with the top two teams receiving semifinal byes.[31]
The Big West is the first Division I all-sports conference (defined as a league that sponsors men's and women's basketball) ever to sponsor men's volleyball, and the second NCAA all-sports conference overall to sponsor men's volleyball as a scholarship sport (the first was the Division IIConference Carolinas).
On November 26, 2017, the Big West announced that it would add UC San Diego along with Cal State Bakersfield as its 10th and 11th members starting on July 1, 2020. Cal State Bakersfield, which was already a full Division I member competing in the Western Athletic Conference, became a full member effective July 1, 2020. UC San Diego, which had failed to move up from Division II in failed bids to the Big West in 2011 and April 2017, has begun the four-year transition process to Division I and became a full member effective July 1, 2024. UC San Diego's men's volleyball joined the Big West in 2017, in advance of that sport's 2018 season, and women's water polo joined in 2019. Because the NCAA does not sponsor a Division II championship in either men's volleyball or women's water polo, UCSD was eligible for conference championships in both sports upon joining the Big West, and remained eligible for such during the D-I transition.[32]
UC San Diego and Cal State Bakersfield, the latter now in the process of rebranding its athletic program as Bakersfield, officially joined the conference on July 1, 2020, and Dan Butterly became the new commissioner following the retirement of Dennis Farrell. UC San Diego officially joined Division I ranks on July 1, 2024, and thus could compete in conference championships and NCAA playoffs from then on.
↑ NCAA fencing is a coeducational sport, with schools fielding separate men's and women's squads and all bouts involving members of the same sex. The only Big West member that sponsors the sport, UC San Diego, fields both squads.
↑ Hawai'i competes at the FBS level, while Cal Poly and UC Davis compete at the FCS level. Sacramento State is yet to announce what level they will be playing at.
↑ The only category of rowing sponsored by the NCAA is women's heavyweight rowing. Men's rowing and women's lightweight rowing are organized by the Intercollegiate Rowing Association.
1 2 Sacramento State has not yet announced a future affiliation for its football or men's indoor track & field programs.
↑ Utah Valley has not yet announced a future affiliation for its men's indoor track & field program.
↑ NCAA fencing is a coeducational sport, with schools fielding separate men's and women's squads and all bouts involving members of the same sex. The only Big West member that sponsors the sport, UC San Diego, fields both squads.
↑ Sacramento State has not yet announced a future affiliation for its men's indoor track & field program.
↑ Has not yet announced a future affiliation for its women's indoor track & field program.
Current conference champions
The Big West Conference sponsors championship competition in 9 men's and 10 women's NCAA sanctioned sports. Men's and women's swimming & diving were added in 2024–25.[33]
Regular-season champions are indicated with "(RS)" and tournament champions with "(T)".
An asterisk denotes the participant in the bowls that invited the Big West champion: Pasadena (1969–70), California (1981–91), Las Vegas (1992–96), and Humanitarian (1997–2000)[34]
The Big West Conference discontinued football following the 2000 season.[35]
Academics
The following table shows National University rank by U.S. News & World Report as of 2024, the Forbes ranking for 2024-25, as well as the Regional Western University rank as denoted by an asterisk.[36][37][38]
Total revenue includes ticket sales, contributions and donations, rights and licensing, student fees, school funds and all other sources including TV income, camp income, concessions, and novelties.
Total expenses includes coach and staff salaries, scholarships, buildings and grounds, maintenance, utilities and rental fees, recruiting, team travel, equipment and uniforms, conference dues, and insurance.
The following table shows institutional reporting to the Knight Commission for the 2023–24 academic year.[40][41]
The following table shows revenue specifically from NCAA / Conference Distributions, Media Rights, and Post-Season Football reported by the Knight Commission for the 2023-24 academic year.
1 2 California Baptist University is a private university, and is therefore not required to submit data to the Knight Commission. Thus, information regarding revenue and expenses on athletics is received from the United States Department of Education as shown on the DOE Equity in Athletics website for the 2024-25 school year.[42] No data is able to be acquired regarding NCAA/Conference Distributions, Media Rights, and Post-Season Football.
Starting during the Big West Conference's 1998–99 season, the Commissioner's Cup is awarded yearly to the most outstanding program throughout the season in the conference's sponsored sports.[47] The UC Santa Barbara Gauchos are the most successful team to date having won 10 total trophies.[48]
Starting in 2021, the Big West Conference served as host of the SoCal Challenge,[49] an eight-team men's basketball tournament held during Monday and Wednesday of Thanksgiving week. One Big West team represented the conference in the field of each tournament. Cal Poly, Cal State Northridge and Cal State Bakersfield participated in 2021, 2022 and 2023, respectively. The final tournament was held in 2023.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
