The Pacific Coast Conference (PCC) was a college athletic conference in the United States which existed from 1915 to 1959. Though the Pac-12 Conference claims the PCC's history as part of its own, with eight of the ten PCC members (including all four original PCC charter members) now in the Pac-12, the older league had a completely different charter and was disbanded in 1959 due to a major crisis and scandal. Established on December 2, 1915, its four charter members were the University of California (now University of California, Berkeley), the University of Washington, the University of Oregon, and Oregon Agricultural College (now Oregon State University). Conference members University of California, Berkeley (1915–1959) University of Oregon (1915–1959) Oregon State College (1915–1959) University of Washington (1915–1959) Washington State College (1917–1959) Stanford University (1918–1959) University of Idaho (1922–1959) University of Southern California (1922–1959, suspended in 1924) University of Montana (1924–1950) University of California, Los Angeles (1928–1959) Membership timeline Before the crisis Rivalries between the Pacific Coast Conference schools grew beyond athletics, with animosities around educational, financial and state rivalries. The tensions between the California and Northwest schools extended to Edwin Pauley, a regent of the University of California, disliking the member universities in the Pacific Northwest enough to advocate that the California institutions leave the Pacific Coast Conference to form a "California Conference." The PCC had a history of being very strict with regards to its standards; it suspended the University of Southern California from the conference in 1924, performed a critical self-study in 1932, and a voluminous two-million-word report was compiled by Edwin Atherton in 1939. The PCC had a paid commissioner, an elaborate constitution, a formal code of conduct, and a system for reporting student-athlete eligibility. Following the submission of his report, Atherton was promptly hired as commissioner in 1940, and served until his death four years later, He was succeeded by his assistant, Victor O. Schmidt. The conference was wracked by scandal in 1951. Charges were made and confirmed that University of Oregon football coach Jim Aiken had violated the conference code for financial aid and athletic subsidies. After Aiken was compelled to resign, Oregon urged the PCC to look at similar abuses by UCLA football coach Red Sanders. The conference spent five years attempting to reform itself. In 1956, the scandal became public. The crisis The scandal first broke at Washington, when in January 1956, several discontented players