SAN DIEGO – After 16 years as the Commissioner of the Pacific West Conference, Bob Hogue attended his final executive board meetings on Shelter Island this week, which concluded on Friday morning.

During Thursday night’s dinner with the executive board, Azusa Pacific President Dr. Adam Morris announced that the PacWest Commissioner’s Cup will be renamed to the Bob Hogue Commissioner’s Cup to honor Hogue’s leadership since 2007.

During the dinner, the PacWest athletic directors presented Hogue with a collection of video messages congratulating him on his retirement, and more than a few noted that it is hard to imagine a PacWest without Hogue as the Commissioner.

That is not an overstatement. Out of all the presidents, athletic directors and administrators in attendance, not a single one has been part of the PacWest longer than Hogue.

To many, Hogue is literally Mr. PacWest. From his colorful PacWest jackets to his knowledge of the history of the geographically diverse league, Hogue is the image that many carry of the conference.

It was on July 14, 2007, that Hogue was announced as the PacWest’s second Commissioner, and he will retire having been the Commissioner for over half of the time that the conference has existed. Read the original announcement here. However, at the time that Hogue took over as the PacWest Commissioner, it was not clear that the PacWest was going to exist for another few years, much less 16.

In 2005, the conference membership dropped to just four member institutions in Hawaii, and the NCAA stripped the PacWest of its automatic bids into the postseason. In order to regain the automatic bids, the PacWest had to increase from four member schools with four conference sports to six member institutions and 10 conference sports.

When Hogue was hired in 2007, regaining the automatic bids was the primary objective. Dixie State, Grand Canyon and Notre Dame de Namur were all on the verge of being added to the conference, but they had to become full NCAA Division II members in order to increase the PacWest membership to at least six.

Within his first year on the job, Hogue guided the PacWest back to full NCAA Division II status. Dixie State and Notre Dame de Namur both gained NCAA Division II status to put the conference at seven members with 10 conference sports. However, the NCAA required a two-year waiting period for a conference to receive automatic bids. Hogue appealed to the NCAA to get the waiting period waived and won the appeal, so that the PacWest was a fully-recognized NCAA Division II conference again by the summer of 2008.

Hogue’s work as a recruiter for the PacWest had just begun. He continued to expand the conference’s presence in the Bay Area, adding Academy of Art and Dominican to conference membership the following year. He also added baseball as a PacWest sport, starting with the “Little World Series” in 2009, which featured three PacWest teams and three teams from Puerto Rico.

It only took a couple more years before Hogue doubled the size of the PacWest and expanded its footprint into southern California with the addition of five former NAIA schools to the PacWest membership. With 14 members in 2012, the PacWest reached its largest size since the megaconference era in the late 1990s, and it was the largest NCAA Division II conference in the West Region.

In just five years with Hogue as Commissioner, the PacWest went from barely holding on to dear life, to a thriving conference that was ready to compete for the biggest titles. At that time, the PacWest achieved something that is truly unique. California Baptist won the PacWest Commissioner’s Cup in 2012. In the same year Grand Canyon won the NCAA Division II Director’s Cup, while provisional PacWest member Azusa Pacific won the NAIA Director’s Cup, meaning three PacWest institutions won all-sport cups in the same year, a feat that can't  be duplicated again.

The PacWest’s success led to three of the member institutions making the leap to NCAA Division I with Grand Canyon, California Baptist and then Dixie State all making the move. However, Hogue continued to add strong members to the PacWest membership with Concordia, Biola, and Westmont joining the conference. Three additional schools are expected to begin PacWest play in 2024.

Hogue has not just made the conference bigger and stronger during his 16-year tenure as Commissioner. He has also improved student-athlete experience by adding championship opportunities. He worked with the conference presidents to bring back the PacWest Men’s and Women’s Basketball Championships for the first time in over a decade in 2013. The basketball tournament was hosted in Hawai`i by Chaminade for the first time this last season.

Conference championships were also added for men’s and women's tennis, men's and women’s golf, and men’s and women’s track & field in the following years. Hogue also created a long-term goal of having championships in baseball, softball, volleyball and men’s and women’s soccer. This past spring, that vision was realized for baseball and softball, and men's and women's soccer championships will be added in 2024.

Part of what made the conference championships in baseball and softball possible was the unique idea to have Pod Championships during the spring of 2021 when most schools in the West Region were not competing at all.

The PacWest has always had to find creative solutions to unique problems that no other conference has to face due to its massive geographical footprint. However, the travel restrictions enacted in 2020 and 2021 forced the PacWest to think outside the box even more. Hogue and the PacWest’s athletic directors placed a high priority on allowing student-athletes to play sports competitively even while most collegiate athletic programs were suspending competition.

In order to make competition possible, Hogue drafted pod schedules that allowed teams to face conference opponents within their geographical area. The three winners of each pod were then invited to a tournament to battle for an automatic bid into the postseason. Hogue’s idea for a pod championship worked, and like the Little World Series was a launching pad for baseball becoming a PacWest sport in 2009, the pod champions tournament became a launching pad for PacWest Championships in both baseball and softball.

Part of Hogue’s legacy has also been his promotion of student-athletes’ academic achievements. In 2008, he created the PacWest Academic Achievement Award, and in in 2010, the conference added Scholar-Athlete of the Year awards to honor students for their success in the classroom.

Growth in membership, sports, championships, and academics has marked Hogue’s 16 years as the PacWest Commissioner. Only three of the current PacWest member institutions were not recruited to join the conference by Hogue. Along with the 13 member institutions he recruited, five sports were added along with eight new championships events and counting. In sum, the total number of student-athletes who had increased opportunities to compete in the sports they love at the NCAA Division II level thanks to the hard work and dedication of Commissioner Hogue is incalculable.

During Hogue’s time as Commissioner, the PacWest has won six NCAA Division II National Championships, reached the championship game 17 times, won 20 NCAA West Region titles, and three NACDA Learfield Directors’ Cups.

Hogue’s pioneering vision has left an indelible mark on the Pacific West Conference, and it is fitting the conference’s biggest award should be named after the man who led the conference to the heights it now enjoys.