Pac-12 to eliminate divisions in football starting in 2022

The Pac-12 announced a big change for football that will go into effect beginning this fall.

The NCAA removed requirements for conferences that want to hold a conference championship game. Previously, conferences that could not play a full round robin were required to have divisions winners meet in the conference championship game. That led the Pac-12 to break into the North and South divisions.

But the NCAA has scrapped the rules, and the Pac-12 wasted no time scrapping their divisions.

Instead, the Pac-12 will now pair the two teams with the best winning percentage in conference play against each other in their championship game. This new rule will go into effect for 2022.

Although the conference is removing divisions and moving ahead this fall with the new conference championship game formula, the teams’ schedules for 2022 will remain the same. The schedules were based upon the now-defunct divisions.

In their press release sharing the news, the Pac-12 noted that this change would have resulted in a different championship game in five of the 11 years.

One of the nice parts about this change is that the two best teams based on conference record will get to meet in the championship game. That should help compensate for when one division is stronger than the other, which can often happen. The downside is you can very well end up with more rematches, with the second game of the two holding more significance than the first.