Baseball tournament signals end of storied Pac-12 (2024)

Willie Bloomquist has played in a lot of baseball games at all levels. One in particular stands out. It came during his playing days at Arizona State in 1998. The Sun Devils were squaring off against national power USC at Packard Stadium and Bloomquist came to bat in a crucial situation.

He roped a bases-clearing double that propelled the Sun Devils to a 7-5 win.

"Having their coaches, having three-quarters of their coaching staff get ejected because they were so pissed off because they thought they had the guy before I struck out on a borderline pitch, and I came up and torched them. God, it was beautiful to see them cry. To me, when I think about all the cool rivalries that SC one was heated with us at the time," he said.

That was just a regular-season game. The two teams would meet again in the national championship game that spring and it was the Trojans getting the last laugh, winning 21-14. That would be the last of the 12 College World Series titles claimed by USC. Arizona State has five titles — year that being one of five runner-up finishes.

Bloomquist, rounding out his third year leading the program he played for, says such rivalries are one thing that makes college baseball special. Many of those will come to an end with the Pac-12 breaking up. USC is one of four schools headed to the Big Ten while ASU is one of four transitioning to the Big 12 for the coming school year. Two are off to the ACC which leaves a Pac-2 of Oregon State and Washington State.

So, there was a nostalgic atmosphere when nine schools convened at Scottsdale Stadium last week for the last Pac-12 championship tournament. It was quite an end, with Arizona winning the championship 4-3 in a walk-off over USC, furthering its efforts at hosting a regional. The transfer portal, NIL and conference realignment have led to a seismic shift in the college athletic landscape. The loss of such rivalries is collateral damage.

No conference has a more storied history in the sport than the Pac-12, which has combined for 29 national championships with seven schools factoring into that total. That's nearly twice as many titles as the second-place conference, the SEC which has 15, including one by LSU a year ago.

Oregon State's Adley Rutschman of the Baltimore Orioles, the No. 1 overall draft selection in 2019, headlines the current star power from the Pac-12 in major league baseball.

Go further back, and you have the likes of Bob Horner, Barry Bonds and Reggie Jackson, all products of ASU. The conference also produced the likes of Mark McGwire (USC), Tom Seaver (USC), Fred Lynn (USC), Mike Mussina (Stanford), Chase Utley (UCLA), John Olerud (Washington State) and Terry Francona (Arizona), the last also going on to a storied managerial career. And there probably is no more significant figure than Jackie Robinson. Yes, he played at UCLA way back in 1940.

High draft picks are telling, too. Stanford leads the nation in first-round draft picks with 25. Close behind is ASU, which has 21, including Spencer Torkelson of the Detroit Tigers, who was the first overall selection in 2020.

"It's probably harder for the older generations that have grown up with it and that's all they know," Oregon State coach Mitch Canham said. "It's extremely frustrating. I look at the 43 teams in the West region and there is phenomenal baseball. Phenomenal coaches. Every weekend you have to be prepared, up and down. A lot of people are disheartened to see this."

Stanford coach David Esquer would fall into that category, having been part of the conference as a player or coach for nearly 40 years. He played on the Cardinal 1987 national championship team. He also coached at Cal for 17 years. Among his other favorite memories was the school cutting the program in September of 2010 along with four other sports, with the 2011 season slated to be the last. The Bears ended up going all the way to the College World Series and in doing so $9 million was raised to save the program from the chopping block.

"It's tragic. It's sad. Its unfathomable that this conference is no longer," he said. "The most NCAA championships in the sport of baseball. Just can't stay together and when I started it was just the six pack. It was the Power Six right. It was a 30-game blood bath. Just the names that have gone through here. It's been an incredible conference and to see it end is sad."

Four of the nine schools that participated in the recent tournament were headed by coaches who played at the school whose program they are now directing. That group includes Bloomquist, Canham, Esquer, and Chip Hale of Arizona, the latter of whom earned conference coach of the year honors.

Bloomquist said the gravity of the situation started kicking in as his team played its last conference series two weeks ago.

"I had some of those emotions when we played the last regular season conference series," he said. "It's bittersweet. From a standpoint of this conference, I've said it a million times, conference of champions. The history of this conference is really unmatched in so many ways. Draft picks. Titles. Championships. It's sad to see it go. Anybody on the West Coast would agree with that. For me personally, this is the conference I played in. I enjoyed it. It's very competitive, a lot of rivalries. We'll miss those rivalries. I'm going to miss playing USC and Stanford and UCLA and those teams that I enjoyed to hate and vice versa. It was a mutual respect, but you also enjoyed that rivalry, and to see all of this dissolve, it's kind of a bummer."

Oregon State has won three national titles. Canham played on teams that won back-to-back titles in 2006 and 2007, winning a combined 99 games those two seasons. He, too, is dismayed by what has materialized.

"I'm from the West Coast, love the West Coast and having these teams playing together," said Canham, who hails from Richland, Washington. "To sit back and dive into it, it's frustrating that the Pac-12 isn't going to be anymore. Hopefully, the right people get together and do the right thing and bring it back to that kind of regional approach. I don't know the intricacies of it, but you don't want to see things like this go away. You see phenomenal baseball on the West Coast and hearing how some teams are going to have travel back and forth. A lot of the rivalries in the Pac, a lot of us have those with each other because you get to see them every year."

While it's easy to reflect on what one was, all admit they will have to eventually turn the page and embrace what comes, acknowledging that new rivalries can emerge although it won't happen overnight.

"We're joining a new conference next year. We've been welcomed with open arms to the Big 12 and we'll be excited for that chapter when it gets here," Bloomquist said.