Northern Pacific Conference

The Northern Pacific Conference (Nor-Pac) was formed for baseball for the 1975 season and comprised the NCAA programs in the Northwest not in the Pacific-8 Conference.[1][2][3] The Big Sky Conference had dropped sponsorship of the sport after the 1974 season,[4][5] and its three remaining baseball programs (Gonzaga, Idaho, Boise State) joined Portland State, Portland, Seattle U., and Puget Sound.[1][2][3][6][7] An eighth team, Eastern Washington, was added after the 1979 season.[8][9][10]

Idaho and Boise State dropped varsity baseball after the 1980 season,[11][12] as did Seattle U., and the five-team Nor-Pac played a seventh and final season in 1981.[10] Puget Sound dropped its program and the remaining four (GU, EWU, PSU, UP) joined the Northern division of the Pac-10 (as affiliate members, baseball only) for 1982;[13][14][15] Oregon also discontinued baseball after 1981,[16][17] which had left just three teams (Washington, Washington State, and Oregon State). In the Pac-10, the champion of the seven-team Northern division met the runner-up of the stronger six-team Southern division in a best-of-three series for the conference's second berth in the NCAA tournament.

Eastern Washington dropped baseball in 1990,[18][19] and Portland State eight years later; after 1995, Gonzaga and Portland moved their baseball to the West Coast Conference (WCC), where their other sports were.[20] Baseball returned at Oregon in 2009,[21] Seattle U. in 2010, and Boise State in 2020.

The Northern Pacific Conference began competition in all women's sports for the 1982–83 season. Members included former NorCal Conference members California, San Francisco, Santa Clara, Pacific, Fresno State, and San Jose State, as well as northwestern division schools Oregon, Oregon State, Washington, and Washington State. The move for a new women's athletic conference was necessitated by the movement of NorCal member Stanford to the women's only Western Collegiate Athletic Association (WCAA), as well as the lack of sponsorship for women's sports by the Pac-10, PCAA, and WCAC conferences.

After their second season in the league, Pacific moved its women's sports to the new women's version of the PCAA. The next year Santa Clara and San Francisco followed Pacific out the door, as they joined the WCAC's new women's sports division. This left the league with just seven schools for what would was its final season. With the WCAA also hit by defections, the Pac-10 began sponsoring women's championships for the 1986–87 season. The departure of the five Pac-10 schools left only San Jose State and Fresno State in the league; both moved their women's sports to the PCAA, aligning themselves with the schools' men's teams.