End of a Pac-12 tradition

The Prefontaine-Lindgren showdown was the opening act of an unprecedented more than half-century run by the conference that comes to a close with the breakup of the Pac-12 and the final conference cross country championship this morning near Tacoma.

“The Conference of Champions is no more,” Meb Keflezighi, a Pac-10 and NCAA cross country champion at UCLA and the 2004 Olympic marathon silver medalist. “It's hard to imagine.”

“The history that has been written with all those great athletes and those great teams and coaches to a certain degree will be lost because when you had the conference meet every year it brings back those memories to everybody and now that's gone,” said longtime UCLA coach Bob Larsen. “Or will be gone.”

The 1969 race would awaken a sleeping giant who would in turn provide a wake-up call for the rest of the nation, forever changing the autumn landscape, shifting the sport's balance of power to the Pac-8 and later the Pac10 and Pac-12 from the East Coast and Midwest, and in the process pushing American distance running to new heights.

“That Pac-8 in '69 opened a few eyes to `hey, there's some great runners out there and let's get them all to nationals and see who can win,'” said Don Kardong, who ran for host Stanford in the 1969 race and later finished fourth in the 1976 Olympic marathon.

And for most of the next decade, the winners wore the iconic lemon yellow with green lettering singlet of Oregon or the maroon and silver of Washington State. Conference teams and runners would dominate college cross country for the next decade and beyond.

Pac-8/Pac-10 runners won eight of the next 11 NCAA individual titles, Lindgren in his final collegiate race, winning his third national cross country title, his 11th NCAA championship overall, 10 days after his duel with Prefontaine. Prefontaine and Washington State's Henry Rono by the end of the coming decade had also joined Lindgren as the then only three-time NCAA champions. Oregon's Edward Cheserek became only the fourth man to claim three NCAA titles, winning the 2013, 2014 and 2015 races. With Stanford's Charlie Hick's victory last November clinched the 22nd NCAA title by a conference runner.

Pac-12 schools have won 12 NCAA men's team titles.

“We were able to up the ante a little bit,” Lindgren said. “You had to run better in cross country to win than you ever had to before.

“It changed everything.”