10 departing Pac-12 schools to retain Pacific-12 accreditation despite conference realignment shattering college football

The Pac-12 has experienced a massive realignment that will forever change college football. Ultimately, 10 of the conference's 12 member schools departed for other conferences. Now only the Oregon State Beavers and the Washington State Cougars are left.

With only two members in the conference, the schedule for the remaining teams is filled with many Mountain West Conference teams. This could be like the Notre Dame Fighting Irish's schedule agreement with the Atlantic Coast Conference.

However, while the regular season was sorted, the question of postseason bowl games still needed to be answered. On Tuesday, the answer was given.

Big Ten commissioner Brett Yormack announced the 10 Pac-12 schools that left the conference are still eligible for the bowl games affiliated with the conference.

The Pac-12 has affiliations with six bowl games, and the conference members who won at least six regular season games are eligible. These bowl games are:

• -The Alamo Bowl
• -The Holiday Bowl
• -The Las Vegas Bowl
• -The Sun Bowl
• -The Los Angeles Bowl
• -The Independence Bowl

The Rose Bowl, a Pac-12-affiliated bowl not involved in the CFP, will not be Pac-12 affiliated anymore. The Rose Bowl is in the expanded college football playoffs format, which is not bound to one conference.

With only two teams in the conference, the Pac-12 cannot field enough teams to fill the spots from their affiliated bowls. Including former conference teams (dubbed the "Pac-12 Legacy Schools") for two more seasons fulfills their requirement and allows games between former conference rivals to occur.

Why are the former Pac-12 teams allowed to play in these bowls?

Now non-Pac-12 conference programs can appear in Pac-12 conference bowl games because of the current contracts with each bowl the conference signed.

These contracts were signed when the Pac-12 was still a 12-team Power Five conference, which is not the case now. Most contracts expire in two seasons, meaning after two years, the bowls can negotiate with whichever conference they want.

The news of the Pac-12 breaking up worried representatives of the Bowl games. One anonymous representative told Action Network:

"No offense, but we didn’t sign up for a Pac-12 bowl deal without USC, UCLA, Oregon, Washington, Utah, et cetera, et cetera.”

The bowl games can still get the likes of Oregon and USC to play in their games for two more years. After that, they will have to do a deal with the Big Ten if they still want to get these teams.