followed a period in which BYU had flirted with a return to its one-time conference home of the WAC, gave BYU's non-football sports a home while its football program chose to become independent. The WCC was not finished with expansion; on March 28, 2012, the WCC welcomed back one of its charter members when it announced that the University of the Pacific would rejoin the conference in July 2013. Pacific had been one of the five original members of what was then the California Basketball Association in 1952, but moved its non-football sports to the Pacific Coast Athletic Association (PCAA), now the Big West Conference, in 1971. (Pacific's football team, previously an independent, joined the PCAA at the league's founding in 1969.) Both BYU and Pacific fit into the WCC's pre-realignment profile of a conference consisting entirely of private, faith-based institutions (all WCC members in 2010 were Catholic except for Pepperdine University, affiliated with the Churches of Christ). BYU is the flagship school of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Pacific was founded by Methodists in 1851 and retains an affiliation with the United Methodist Church, although it is now officially non-denominational and has not received financial support from the church since 1969. According to The Record, the daily newspaper of Pacific's home city of Stockton, California, "Pacific's administration. . . had a long-stated desire to join the WCC, because they felt it was a better fit academically, geographically and financially." Pacific was an outlier in the PCAA/Big West throughout its tenure in that conference; despite many membership changes, it is the only private school to have ever been a member. It had joined the PCAA to accommodate football, but after the school dropped the sport in 1995, it had openly sought to rejoin the WCC. However, the WCC, whose membership had been stable with eight schools since 1980, showed no interest because of the lack of available private institutions that would bring the conference membership to 10. Once BYU came on board, the WCC then sought to add a 10th member to ease scheduling, with Pacific becoming an obvious choice, especially after Seattle (also a Catholic institution) chose to join the WAC. By moving to the WCC, Pacific rejoined a conference with institutions closer to its size and mission. BYU, with an enrollment of nearly 33,000, is the only WCC member with an enrollment in five figures.