The Pac-12 Conference is a collegiate athletic conference that operates in the Western United States. It participates in 22 NCAA sports in the NCAA's Division I; its football teams compete in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS; formerly Division I-A), the higher of two levels of NCAA Division I football competition. The conference's 12 members are located in Arizona, California, Colorado, Oregon, Utah, and Washington. They include each state's flagship public university, four additional public universities, and two private research universities. The conference was created after the disbanding of the Pacific Coast Conference (PCC), whose principal members founded the Athletic Association of Western Universities (AAWU) in 1959, and went by the names Big Five, Big Six, Pacific-8, Pacific-10.