Pac-12 football returns 4 years after exodus nearly sent the conference to extinction‎

The Pac-12, the self-dubbed “Conference of Champions” with athletic excellence going back more than a century, turned into the conference of ashes. A mass exodus of 10 schools in 15 months left the Pac-12 in tatters, dimming the future of a conference that was once the proud home of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Cheryl Miller, Tiger Woods, Jackie Robinson, Lisa Leslie, Jackie Joyner-Kersey and many more. League brass and the two remaining schools worked behind scenes to pull the conference out of a death spiral and now, more than four years since the first two schools left, the Pac-12 is back as something of a startup.