This post was updated June 5 at 10:05 p.m.

The last Pac-12 game ever wrapped up in fitting fashion – Arizona walked off USC in the conference baseball championship under a dark Scottsdale, Arizona, sky. Longtime Pac-12 broadcaster and California alumnus Roxy Bernstein succinctly summarized the conference’s finale.

“One last Pac-12 After Dark,” Bernstein said as the Wildcats celebrated their win. “That’s how the Pac-12 comes to a conclusion.”

As 10 schools head to the Big Ten, Big 12 and Atlantic Coast Conference, I spoke to writers and editors of newspapers covering Pac-12 schools to find out what the conference meant to them, their fondest memories and what they’ll miss most.

These interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

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Q: What does the Pac-12 mean to you?

When I committed to Wazzu (Washington State), I really saw what the Pac-12 meant because here was this little land-grant institution in the middle of nowhere. Pullman is – no one really passes through. They go there for a reason, and you know you had hundreds of student-athletes choosing to go to Pullman to further their athletic careers. Obviously, we didn’t always yield the best teams – haven’t historically – but especially in my time here, I’ve just been really lucky to experience a Pac-12 championship for women’s basketball over UCLA.

And then our men’s program just took off this year. Football had the bowl streak that was the second-longest active in the Pac-12 until it was broken last year. A lot of success relative to our size, and the reason that that was the case was because of the people, and because the Pac-12 – the chance to compete in a Power Five conference – was very attractive and brought us some pretty premier student-athletes, who represented Wazzu with pride and competed against some of the best in the game really well.

I really appreciate the Pac-12, just because of what it did for the community that I called home for the last three years in Pullman. … It (the Pac-12) meant everything to Pullman, and it meant everything to me. It was just a really cool staple of college sports, and it makes me sad there’s not going to be a dominant West Coast brand anymore.

– Sam Taylor, former Sports editor for the Daily Evergreen, Washington State’s student newspaper.

Coming here to Stanford, and then also obviously attending other Pac-12 sporting events, I realized how much history there is associated with this conference and then also how much dominance this conference has. Maybe not football necessarily, but in a lot of the other Olympic sports. Gymnastics, softball, water polo. … A lot of other sports that maybe don’t get as much television time.

I just realized how dominant the Pac-12 was in these, including Stanford. … So I think that that’s one thing that I’ll always remember about the Pac-12 is just how dominant of a conference it was in a lot of the more under-recognized sports.

– Kaushik Sampath, Sports editor for the Stanford Daily, Stanford’s student newspaper.

What totally represents the Pac-12 to me is the Pac-12 After Dark. The craziness when the East Coast goes to sleep. I feel like every year in almost every sport, you have your USCs, your UCLAs, your Oregons, for each sport kind of at the top. But I feel like every year there’s always one team that always just does really well, and that changes constantly. The constant parity of the Pac-12, I think, is what always stood out to me.

– Stefano Fendrich, former Sports editor for the Daily Trojan, USC’s student newspaper.

My time with the Pac-12 has been a little different, because I didn’t grow up with it. I mean, yeah, I knew Pac-12 After Dark, but I grew up in the Midwest, so I was always watching the Big 12 and the SEC (Southeastern Conference). And I know some people who are from California, Arizona, Oregon, Washington, that was their childhood, is watching those games and stuff.

But the Pac-12 just felt different. Because the SEC and the Big Ten are just these big monoliths that are trying to solidify their position in college sports. … And the Pac-12 was just kind of like, “We’re the West Coast conference. We’re having fun.” So I think the Pac-12 was like the last bastion of what college sports should have been.

– Jack Barron, Sports editor for the State Press, Arizona State’s student newspaper.

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Q: What’s your fondest memory covering the Pac-12?

I’d say it was our women’s basketball Pac-12 championship (in 2023). I pulled double duty – it’s college, so it’s definitely interesting. But I was both a member of the pep band and I wrote about the team, so I was in Las Vegas for that game. … Our women’s basketball team is comprised of – there’s like 13 people there, eight different countries represented. And so it was a very internationally driven team.

You had Charlisse (Leger-Walker) from New Zealand, Bella Murekatete – first Rwandan to play DI women’s basketball – and you have just a lot of these people who would not have met if it weren’t for the Pac-12 and weren’t for Wazzu. And just seeing them overcome the odds and beat a bunch of ranked teams and earn their ranking after that week. … Being a part of that in multiple respects as a member of the band and writing about it as a member of the media was really inspiring.

• Sam Taylor

I’ve got several. I joined the desk about two years ago – fall of ’22. So my very first beat as just a newbie sports reporter, I got put on women’s basketball, which at the time the Utah women’s basketball team, they were doing alright. They weren’t the best, and even in the Pac-12, they were kind of on the up-and-up. I went into that kind of not really knowing anything. And then they had their best season ever. They just exploded. They ended up winning the Pac-12 (regular-season championship) for the first time that year, went all the way through the Sweet 16 in the NCAAs.

Just that whole journey of watching them gain that traction and just build exceptional skill, and make it all the way, that was just that was really special for me. And that’s kind of what ultimately hooked me on the sports desk, too. Just having jumped into that.

– Abbey Thomas, Sports editor for the Daily Utah Chronicle, Utah’s student newspaper.

This past year, I went to the Pac-12 tournament for the men’s basketball team, and that was just such a sweet experience for me personally, just being there. But I think really, being there for the last one and at the end after Oregon had won it all and the confetti had dropped and everything and all the Pac-12 employees were all there and watching the tribute video that they played. I think that was probably really the – as far as Pac-12 memories – that’s probably the biggest one that will stand out in my mind.

You could feel the emotion of such a great conference wrapping up in that moment in front of a few hundred people. … Seeing what the – like I said – what the Pac-12 meant to people, especially whenever I talk to journalists or just people who would follow any schools who had been in the Pac-12.

I had a professor who had just talked about how they had followed the Pac-12 their whole life and they’re in their 70s. Just hearing how much the Pac-12 could mean to a person for someone like me who hadn’t really gotten the chance to embrace it at its peak. That was probably the coolest thing, I guess, outside of individual events like going to the tournament is hearing how other people embrace the Pac-12.

– Oliver Hayes, Sports editor for Sko Buffs Sports, Colorado’s student-run sports media club.

The things that I really remember are getting to know some of the young people. Obviously, there’s moments in the stadium. There was a great moment at Gill Coliseum this year, women’s basketball, UCLA was in town. Raegan Beers got hurt. She took that shot to the nose and was out of the game, and Oregon State came back, and Talia – if you remember – Talia von Oelhoffen hit a shot at the buzzer, and the place just went bananas.

And that’s when sports is just a lot of fun is being part of a group of people that – there’s no cheering in the press box, but you feel the energy and the excitement of the fans, and sensing that, and in some way being a part of it, even as you’re having to be objective about it. That’s fun.

– Les Gehrett, Sports editor for the Corvallis Gazette-Times, Corvallis’ local newspaper.

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Q: What will you miss the most about the Pac-12?

While the history will always lie with our fiercest rivals, you look at – even some of these, like Arizona State. For whatever reason, Washington has incredible trouble with them. You look at Cal. We always have some weird After Dark game. You’re just worried going into the game. Utah is a defensive affair, no matter what. All these teams you have this tradition, and you know the school well, and you go into it kind of knowing what to expect because of how many times you played them, and you kind of get excited for it, for whatever reason that may be.

And now, moving into the Big Ten – Michigan, we played in the championship, but I mean, it’s an entirely different team on both sides of the paper. So the history isn’t there. Rutgers, I mean, obviously, it’s not there. All these teams, it’s going to take a while to get it started. And when you look back on it, last season, let’s just say playing that Arizona State team late at night. You knew what you’re going to come into, and when Washington welcomes Maryland for like a week five matchup, people aren’t going to be excited about that because they don’t know what to expect.

They don’t have the tradition that comes with it. They don’t have the history that comes with it. And to just throw all that out the window is just a shame. So yeah, you can keep some of the opponents, some of the rivalries, but losing the conference as a whole is just an incredible loss.

– Ty Gilstrap, Sports editor for The Daily, Washington’s student newspaper.

The memory of my sophomore year of being able to hop in the car and head down to LA for a Weekender – Cal-USC – was a great memory and something that I’m going to be really sad that is going be gone. The opportunity to have this local game. You don’t need to take a flight. You can hop in the car with your friends. I stayed at my house because I’m from Los Angeles. To be able to do that and see a storied match of Cal-USC, that’s probably our second biggest game of the year.

It was a part of a greater college football tradition. And I’m very sad that the opportunity for those memories centered around students and centered around local fans is not going to be able to happen anymore. … Our closest (non-Stanford) away game is going to be SMU (Southern Methodist) so there’s no opportunity for any of these games. … The conference felt a lot more centered around fans before, whereas now it kind of feels like it’s in a more inauthentic place, now, where Cal is in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

I’m kind of sad about that. I think that everybody knows that college football and college sports are in an inauthentic place when Cal and Stanford are in the Atlantic Coast Conference, but we’re all kind of just going along with it. And I think that the Pac-12 and the conferences that we’ve had for the past few decades were so much more logical and so much more convenient and so much more fan-centered.

– Colin Mequet, former Sports editor for the Daily Californian, Cal’s student newspaper.

The Pac-12, there’s been so many just incredible people that have come from it – players, coaches. And then that has just created the sports atmosphere: announcers, professional players. … The people I’ve met from coaches and players and whatnot. I think that’s maybe the thing I’ll miss most. Obviously, there’s been a lot of incredible games and moments. But I think more so, it’s just the people you meet during the games or the different events you go to within the conference.

– Jason Dayee, former Sports editor for the Daily Wildcat, Arizona’s student newspaper.

Some of the rivalries are coming with the Ducks to the Big Ten. Obviously, you guys (UCLA), USC and Washington. But man, I’ll miss playing Oregon State in conference play. I’ll miss games against – Oregon State is the big one. Stanford has, especially in football, had some duels with us, so I’ll miss Stanford, watching them play. Rivalries, old history. I’ll miss it. … I think the Ducks are playing Oregon State week three this year, which is like, at least we’re still playing them, but man, does that not feel right.

– Joe Moore, Sports reporter for the Daily Emerald, Oregon’s student newspaper.

One thing that was cool about the Pac-12 was that the Pac-12 cared about everything. It cared about a lot more sports than just football. And everybody loves football and football is the king of everything. We all get that, yes. Football is the driving force behind all of the moving parts that we see going on right now, and the Pac-12 has got a great football tradition, but the Pac-12 has never been just about football.

Women’s sports have been hugely supported and hugely successful. And for Oregon State to get to be part of that means that in all of these sports, Oregon State got to compete at the highest level. Whether it be women’s basketball or gymnastics, or basketball, baseball, football, all of it. Just being part of this conference that had this nationwide respect meant a lot to Oregon State. It validated it, lifted it up. And now, Oregon State’s going to have to find a new identity outside of that, or in a different way.

– Les Gehrett

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Q: Do you have any lingering thoughts?

I grew up in San Diego. We did not have a Pac-12 team there. We could align ourselves with UCLA if you really wanted to. … But at the end of the day we had San Diego State in the Mountain West Conference, yet still all my friends, everybody that I talked to, they would watch Pac-12 just because it was West Coast football, basketball, whatever sport you want to align yourself with. That was kind of where you felt represented and being able to see that in a conference was – it made sports watching that much more intimate, that much better.

And now for those parts of the West Coast who may not have a team like San Diego, it’s just going be a little bit more difficult now. Looking at, do you align with a Big Ten team? Do you see your part of the country with Maryland and Rutgers and stuff like that? Even though they have a few West Coast teams, that’s just kind of the interesting dynamic of it. UCLA, USC, Washington and Oregon, our futures – even though it’s a few half shares – they’re preserved for the time being. But for a lot of these schools, a lot of these cities, college sports is just going to look a lot different in the future, and may not be for the better.

– Ty Gilstrap

It’s really crazy because I feel like with this kind of move, it means there are no rules anymore. Who knows when these media deals expire, if we’ll have three conferences – main conferences – after this. So, I think I’ll always miss the Pac-12, and it’s probably going to be remembered as the first domino to fall in terms of conferences, and we might just start having these mega, 20-team conferences, maybe 30, 40, doesn’t really stop.

So, I think the Pac-12 will always be remembered fondly. … It’s sad to remember that it’s gone because it literally – the conference has been around for so long. The Big Ten will obviously be fun to play these better opponents but I don’t know if you can fully replace everything that the Pac-12 had.

– Stefano Fendrich

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Reporting on UCLA and the Pac-12 has been a true joy. I’ve had incredible opportunities to cover the Pac-12 men’s basketball tournament; UCLA football in Salt Lake City, Tucson and at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum; UCLA women’s golf at the 2024 national championship in Carlsbad, California; and a million other amazing events. But if I had to choose one thing I’d miss the most, it’s the community of this conference.

Often snubbed by “East Coast bias,” the Pac-12 and its fans are united even among bitter program rivalries. The storied history gives the conference a tight-knit feel that others lack. I can’t possibly imagine UCLA’s game against Minnesota later this year having anywhere close to the level of significance behind it that a game against Arizona State may carry. In 20, 30, 40 years, who knows if that meaningful relationship between programs will develop. But I also don’t think conferences as we know them are going to be the same in two decades.

B1G things are ahead for UCLA, and there’s a lot to be excited about. But for now, it’s sad that the Pac-12 is going away. I’m going to miss it.

– Joseph Crosby, 2023-2024 Sports editor for the Daily Bruin, UCLA’s student newspaper