UC Santa Barbara is finalizing a deal to join the West Coast Conference beginning in the 2027-2028 athletic season, according to a post on X by CBS insider Jon Rothstein. With the agreement, UCSB will become the fourth school to officially leave the Big West Conference within the next two years.
Following the departure of UCSB, the Big West will consist of Cal Poly, Cal Baptist, Cal State Bakersfield, Cal State Fullerton, Long Beach State, Cal State Northridge, Sacramento State, UC Irvine, UC Riverside and Utah Valley, with exceptions made for certain sports.
The University of Hawai’i was the first Big West school to make a move to another conference, announcing its departure for the Mountain West Conference in October 2024, effective at the beginning of the 2026-2027 athletic season. UC Davis followed shortly after and signaled its intent to move to the Mountain West just two months later; they will fully merge into the conference this fall.
UC San Diego was the most recent school prior to UCSB to take their leave, announcing its intention to join the WCC in September 2025. This change will be effective beginning in fall 2027. UCSD and UCSB are two of three schools to join the WCC within the past seven months, joining the University of Denver.
To begin the 2027-2028 season, the WCC will boast a conference-record of 12 schools competing within the conference.
The Gauchos have been widely recognized as the rival school to Cal Poly, particularly in men’s soccer, a sport in which Cal Poly had also decided to shift gears in. Though smaller scale in comparison to the aforementioned members, Cal Poly Men’s Soccer made the decision to leave the Big West and compete in the Pac-12 Conference beginning in the 2026-2027 athletic season.
READ MORE: “Cal Poly Men’s Soccer to move to Pac-12 Conference following 25 years in Big West”
The two schools annually host the “Blue-Green” rivalry games at both campuses, with crowd attendance regularly exceeding 10,000 fans. Of the top 75 most-attended regular season matches in collegiate soccer history, the Blue-Green rivalry match is responsible for 33 matches on the list.
Cal Poly and UCSB are scheduled to face one another in two non-conference matches at each respective campus for the upcoming men’s soccer season. With both schools beginning to shift from the Big West, it is unclear if and how the rivalry match will continue in the near future.