Northern Pacific Conference (baseball)

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 briefly at Boise State for a pandemic-shortened 2020 season before being eliminated a second time due to a budget reduction..