It flew under the radar, but a significant development involving the Pac-12 Conference happened early this week.
Nobody issued a news release.
Nobody gave a quote.
The plaintiff’s attorneys are about to remove the Pac-12 from the latest class-action lawsuit aimed at chipping away at the NCAA model and I think it opens an interesting discussion.
Patterson v. NCAA is an antitrust lawsuit filed in September 2025 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee. It’s an eligibility case, involving Vanderbilt University linebacker Langston Patterson.
Patterson and a group of athletes are challenging the new ‘five-year’ rule in college athletics.
The NCAA is named in the lawsuit. So are the ‘Power 4’ conferences. The Pac-12 was also included in a draft of the amended complaint as late as last week. I’m told by a source on the plaintiffs side that the Pac-12 is being removed.