Power conferences

The ten FBS conferences as of the 2025–26 academic year are listed. For the Power Four, the members of each conference are also listed: Map of Power Four teams Teams by State ==Power conferences in the College Football Playoff era==

Position within college football and the FBS The power conferences are all part of NCAA Division I, which contains most of the largest and most competitive collegiate athletic programs in the United States, and the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), which is the higher of the two levels of college football within NCAA Division I. It is unknown where the term "Power Conference" originated; it is not officially documented by the NCAA, though it has been used since at least 2006. The top conferences in college football are called the "Power Four conferences": the Big Ten Conference, the Big 12 Conference, the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), and the Southeastern Conference (SEC). Roughly half of the schools in the FBS play in one of the Power Four conferences. The remaining schools are either independent or play in one of the conferences known as the Group of Six conferences, which consists of the American Conference ("American"), Conference USA (CUSA), the Mid-American Conference (MAC), the Mountain West Conference (MW), the Pac-12 Conference ("Pac-12"), and the Sun Belt Conference (SBC). The term "Power Four conferences" is often shortened to "P4", while the remaining conferences are referred to as the "Group of Six conferences", or "Group of Five conferences" before the Pac-12's loss of autonomy. The FBS has two independents as of the 2025 season: the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and the UConn Huskies. Notre Dame is considered equal to the Power Four schools, being a full (with the exception of football) member of the ACC with an annual five-game football scheduling agreement with that conference; Notre Dame also has its own national television contract and its own arrangement for access to the CFP-affiliated bowl games should it meet stated competitive criteria. The other independents are generally considered to be on the same level as the G6 conferences. Compared to the G6 conferences, power conference schools have significantly higher revenue, due to television deals with major networks and streaming services. In 2022, the power conferences generated a combined $3.3 billion in revenue. College football games often draw strong television ratings, and, along with the NFL, college football was one of the few television properties to grow in live ratings between 2013 and 2023. In 2022, college football games between power conference teams made up five of the ten most-watched non-NFL sporting events among U.S. viewers. With 22.56 million viewers, the 2022 national championship game ranked as the most watched college football game of the year, and as the 33rd most-watched sporting event in the United States; only NFL games ranked higher. Almost every Power Four school has a home stadium capacity of at least 40,000, and the power conferences all had an average attendance of at least 46,000 in 2024. This compares to an FBS average attendance of just over 42,000 and Group of Six average attendance that ranged between 14,000 and 25,000 for each conference, This revenue advantage allows Power Four conferences to pay higher salaries to coaches Although schools cannot directly pay student athletes, since 2021 school boosters and other third parties can pay student athletes for their name, image, and likeness (NIL) rights. Much of this NIL money goes to Power Four conference athletes, although numerous athletes from other conferences have also received NIL compensation. Scheduling and college football playoff Teams in the Power Four conferences play an eight or nine-game conference schedule, and play an additional three or four non-conference games to fill out their 12-game regular season schedule. Teams from the Power Four and the Group of Five often play non-conference games against each other during the season, and sometimes also play against teams from the FCS, the lower tier of division one football. However, many coaches of power conference schools have argued that power conference schools should only be allowed to schedule games against other power conference schools. Though not required to do so, all Power Four conferences hold conference championship games following the conclusion of the regular season and prior to the College Football Playoff. The power conferences previously each had two divisions and matched the winner of each division in the conference championship game, but all of the Power Four conferences have scrapped divisions, and conference championship games take place between the two highest-ranking teams. The College Football Playoff requires that a conference have at least eight teams in order to be eligible for an automatic qualifying bid, so the two-member Pac-12 is not eligible to receive an automatic bid. ==History==

Origins of the power conferences , deemed national champion of the 1900 college football season College football originated in the Northeastern United States in the final third of the 19th century, with the 1869 Princeton vs. Rutgers football game often considered to be the first college football game. The schools that eventually formed the Ivy League dominated college football in the 19th century and for parts of the 20th century, claiming numerous national championships. Motivated in large part by fatalities and injuries sustained in college football, President Theodore Roosevelt worked with various collegiate athletic programs to establish the NCAA in 1906. The NCAA was preceded by the earliest athletic conferences, including the Big Ten, which was founded in 1896 as the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representatives and was often referred to as the "Western Conference". The conference became known as the Big Ten after expanding to ten teams in 1917, though it did not legally adopt the "Big Ten" name until 1987. The Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association (SIAA), founded in 1894, at its peak consisted of 28 schools across almost every Southern state, and was the predecessor to both the SEC and the ACC. The Big Six later expanded to eight teams in 1957, becoming known as the Big Eight Conference. The Southwest Conference (SWC) was formed in 1914 by several schools in Texas and neighboring states and, after some early defections, maintained stable membership into the 1990s. The Pacific Coast Conference (PCC) was founded in 1915, but disbanded in 1959 following a "pay-for-play" scandal. Some of the former members of the Pacific Coast Conference formed the Athletic Association of Western Universities (AAWU) that same year, and by 1968 the AAWU had renamed itself as the Pac-8 and contained most of the former members of the PCC. Several of the larger schools split off from the SIAA in 1921 to form the Southern Conference, and the SIAA ultimately dissolved in 1942. The Southern Conference in turn later experienced the departure of its most prominent teams, first with the secession of 13 schools located south or west of the Appalachians to form the SEC in 1932. Most of the remaining large schools departed the Southern Conference in 1953 to form the ACC, and after losing its top programs, the Southern Conference ultimately became part of the FCS. The Ivy League was officially founded in the 1950s, but the football programs of Ivy League schools declined in stature after World War II, and the conference ultimately dropped down to Division I-AA in 1982. Many of these independents were affiliated with the Big East Conference, the Atlantic 10 Conference (A-10), or the Metro Conference, each of which were founded in the 1970s as non-football conferences. In 1962, several members of the Skyline Conference and the Border Conference founded the Western Athletic Conference (WAC). Although generally not considered a power conference, four of the six founding WAC members ultimately joined one of the Power Four conferences, and the 1984 BYU Cougars football team won the national championship. NCAA divisions were created in 1956, initially for basketball and cross-country, with the largest schools placed in the University Division and other schools in the College Division. The NCAA requested all schools to classify themselves as members of the College or University divisions in 1968, and in 1973 the University Division was renamed Division I and given the power to establish some of its own rules related to matters such as recruitment and membership criteria. In 1978, Division I football programs were further sub-divided into Division I-A (later Division I FBS) and Division I-AA (later Division I FCS). Rise of bowl games and precursors to the BCS The Rose Bowl, a postseason game matching top teams from the West with top teams from the East, was first played in 1902 and became a yearly tradition in 1916. As college football grew beyond its regional affiliations in the 1930s, it garnered increased national attention. Four new bowl games were created: the Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl, and Sun Bowl in 1935, and the Cotton Bowl in 1937. In lieu of an actual national championship, these bowl games provided a way to match up teams from distant regions of the country that did not otherwise play. In 1936, the Associated Press began its weekly poll of prominent sports writers, ranking all of the nation's college football teams. Since there was no national championship game, the final version of the AP poll was used to determine who was crowned the national champion of college football. The first college football game was televised in 1938, and as universities began to widely televise their games after World War II, the NCAA took control of television broadcast rights in 1951 and restricted the number of games that a program could air on television. The 1984 Supreme Court case NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma spurred a round of conference realignment by ending the NCAA's monopoly on television rights of college football games, instead granting the rights to individual schools and conferences. With the exception of Notre Dame, all of the major independent programs joined a conference in the early 1990s. Many of the independents in the Northeast and elsewhere on the Eastern Seaboard joined the Big East, which began playing football in 1991. The Southwest Conference dissolved in the wake of a series of scandals and concerns over an insufficiently large television market, and four teams from that conference joined with the Big 8 to create the Big 12 Conference in 1994. Under the BCS system , the BCS championship game for the 2003 season In 1998, the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) was created by the Big 10, Pac-12, and the former members of the Bowl Alliance. The Rose Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, the Orange Bowl, and the Fiesta Bowl all took part in the system, with a national championship game either rotating among the four bowl sites (prior to the 2006 season) or played as a separate game. The BCS succeeded in bringing an end to split national championships, except in the 2003 season, when LSU won the national championship game and was crowned national champion by the Coaches Poll, but USC was selected as the national champion by the AP poll. While the number of AQ conferences was technically variable, the BCS always had six AQ conferences for its entire history between 1998 and 2013. Following the departure of several Big East members to the ACC, the non-football schools of the Big East known as the "Catholic 7" chose to withdraw from the conference, ultimately creating a new conference that took on the Big East name. The rump Big East renamed itself as the American Athletic Conference (now known as the American Conference) and took the Big East's automatic bid for the 2013 season. The Mountain West Conference, formed in 1998 by several former WAC members, was perhaps the closest of the other conferences to getting AQ status, but its request for AQ status was denied in 2012. In addition to creating a national championship game, the BCS also created a set format for other major bowls. After the two top teams in the BCS rankings were matched up in the BCS National Championship Game, the other three or (after the 2005 season) four bowls selected other top teams. The BCS ranking formula used a combination of polls and computer selection methods to determine team rankings, though conference championships also affected game selection. Each of the bowls had a historical link with one or more of the six BCS conferences with the exception of the former Big East, and the bowl games selected a team from each of these conferences if it was eligible for a BCS bowl and not playing in the national title game. Notre Dame remained an independent in football, but had guaranteed access to the BCS bowls when it met certain defined performance criteria. The conferences automatic qualifying conferences and their traditional bowl links were: • Big East Conference (The American in 2013) (not tied to any specific BCS bowl) • Atlantic Coast Conference (Orange Bowl) • Big 12 Conference (Fiesta Bowl) • Big Ten Conference (Rose Bowl) • Pac-12 Conference (Rose Bowl) • Southeastern Conference (Sugar Bowl) The other conferences (listed below) were non-AQ conferences because they did not receive an annual automatic bid to a BCS bowl game. The highest ranked champion of any non-AQ conference received an AQ bid if they ranked in the top 12 of the final BCS poll or ranked in the top 16 and higher than a champion of an AQ conference. The conferences in this group were: • Big West Conference (BWC) – stopped sponsoring football after the 2000 season. • Conference USA (CUSA) • Mid-American Conference (MAC) • Mountain West Conference (MW) • Sun Belt Conference (SBC) – began sponsoring football in 2001. • Western Athletic Conference (WAC) – dropped football after the 2012 season. Under the four-team College Football Playoff system The BCS faced several controversies throughout its tenure, driven largely by teams and fans dissatisfied at being left out of the championship game. The presence of two SEC teams in the 2012 BCS National Championship Game brought the opposition to the BCS to a head, and helped spur the adoption of the College Football Playoff beginning with the 2014 season. Although the term "Power Five conferences" had been used by at least 2006, Each conference champion from the Power Five and the highest-ranked Group of Five conference champion were guaranteed a spot in a New Year's Six Bowl. Because there were four spots in the playoffs and five power conferences, at least one Power Five champion was always left out of the playoff. In some seasons only two or three P5 champions were selected to the playoff, though the 2023 Florida State Seminoles were the lone undefeated P5 champion to be passed over for selection. The new playoff system drew strong television ratings, helping to boost the profile of college football and specifically to the Power Five conferences, who constituted all but one of the CFP participants in the four-team era, and the remaining FBS programs. Bowl games declined in prestige as more focus went to the playoff, and even the New Year's Six bowls frequently saw top players opt out. Like the BCS, the new system endured a series of controversies related to teams being left out of the championship process, both among the Power Five and the Group of Five, leading many to call for a playoff. Another Group of Five team, the 2017 UCF Knights, was left out of the CFP, but proclaimed themselves the national champion after going undefeated in the regular season and winning the 2018 Peach Bowl. As part of the early-2020s NCAA conference realignment, ten schools departed from the Pac-12 following the 2023 college football season, leaving Oregon State and Washington State as the last remaining members of the Pac-12. Although the Football Bowl Subdivision requires conferences to have at least eight members, the conference continued operating with just two members because conferences are allowed a two-year grace period after losing members. In early 2024, the NCAA Division I Board of Directors stripped the Pac-12 of its autonomous conference status. In light of the changes, various sources began referring to the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, and SEC as the Power Four Conferences, with the Pac-12 relegated to "de facto Group of 5 status". ==Realignment since the 1990s==

The FBS has undergone several waves of realignment since the 1990s, when the Bowl Coalition was established. The first realignment occurred in the 1990s, and resulted in the demise of the Southwest Conference, which was a member of the Bowl Coalition and at times considered equal to some of the power conferences; as well as many schools giving up independent status to join conferences. In the early 1990s, Arkansas left the Southwest Conference for the SEC; the original Big East Conference began sponsoring football, with eight former football independents joining either for all sports or football only; and other major independents such as Florida State (to the ACC), Penn State (to the Big Ten), and South Carolina (to the SEC) joined major conferences. In the 1996 NCAA conference realignment, the SWC dissolved, and four Texas teams from that conference joined with the Big 8 schools to form the Big 12 Conference. The most recent major realignment is ongoing, though there is no future planned power conference realignment after the 2024 season. During a period of less than two months in 2021, the Big 12 both gained and lost members. First, on July 30, the conference lost two of its mainstays when Oklahoma and Texas announced that they would leave for the SEC no later than 2025; the two schools later reached a buyout agreement allowing them to join the SEC in 2024. The Big 12 reloaded by announcing four new members on September 10, initially announcing that American members Cincinnati, Houston, and UCF plus FBS independent BYU would join no later than 2024. BYU's initial announcement stated that it would join in 2023, and the other three schools' 2023 entry date was confirmed after they reached a buyout agreement with The American. On June 30, 2022, Pac-12 mainstays UCLA and USC announced they would move to the Big Ten in 2024. The Pac-12 lost another member a little more than a year later when Colorado returned to the Big 12 in 2024 after an absence of 13 years. Five more schools announced their departure from the Pac-12 on August 4, 2023; Oregon and Washington joined the Big Ten and Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah joined the Big 12. Less than a month after this exodus, California and Stanford announced their departure from the Pac-12 to join the ACC in 2024, with American Conference member SMU also joining the ACC. This realignment led to Pac-12 being considered a de facto member of the Group of Five, The realignment also generated much commentary regarding the lack of geographical proximity within conferences. In a 2022 article, FiveThirtyEight described the Big Ten as the first "major college athletics league" to be bicoastal (the Big Ten would later be joined by the ACC in this distinction after the latter conference added Stanford and California), adding that the average distance between FBS conference members was set to increase from 336 miles to 412 miles. List of schools that changed power conferences since 1998 Indicates a football-only move. Indicates a non-football move. This list includes all institutions that have either left or announced their departure from the ACC, Big East, Big 12, Pac-12, Big 10, or SEC since the establishment of the Bowl Championship Series in 1998. List of schools that joined a power conference since 1998 Indicates a football-only move. Indicates a non-football move. This list includes all institutions that joined or have announced that they will join the ACC, Big 12, Pac-12, Big 10, or SEC after the establishment of the Bowl Championship Series in 1998, and that had previously been independent or had affiliated with a non-power conference. It also includes all institutions that joined the original Big East between 1998 and 2013, and teams that joined the AAC for the 2013 season, since that conference inherited the Big East's BCS automatic qualifying status for that season. ==Bowl game results==

New Year's Six and BCS Bowl Game appearances by conference The following table lists the number of times that a member of each conference appeared was selected to appear in a BCS bowl game (from 1998 to 2013), a New Year's Six bowl game (from 2014 to 2023), or the College Football Playoff (since 2014). From the 1998 to 2005 seasons eight teams were selected, from 2006 to 2013 ten teams were selected, and since 2014 twelve teams have been selected to appear in these games. A * indicates a team from that conference won the national championship as determined by the BCS or the College Football Playoff, while a ^ indicates a team from that conference was the runner-up in the national championship game. Statistics reflect conference membership at the time of the game. Note that the American filled the Big East's automatic bid in 2013. BCS games involving non-automatic qualifying conferences Ten "non-AQ" teams appeared in the nine following BCS games, with an overall record of 5-3: • 2005 Fiesta Bowl: Utah (MW) 35, Pittsburgh 7 • 2007 Fiesta Bowl: Boise State (WAC) 43, Oklahoma 42 (OT) • 2008 Sugar Bowl: Georgia 41, Hawaii (WAC) 10 • 2009 Sugar Bowl: Utah (MW) 31, Alabama 17 • 2010 Fiesta Bowl: Boise State (WAC) 17, TCU (MW) 10 • 2011 Rose Bowl: TCU (MW) 21, Wisconsin 19 • 2013 Orange Bowl: Florida State 31, Northern Illinois (MAC) 10 Of these appearances, all were via automatic qualifying bids, except Boise State's participation in the highly controversial 2010 Fiesta Bowl in which the Broncos were selected via at-large bid and played fellow BCS Buster TCU. Power Conference vs Group Conference New Year's Six and College Football Playoff games College Football Playoff semifinal in bold. Group conference team in italics. Asterisks denotes years in which group conference teams won the game. ==Table of revenues, television sports rights, and average attendance==

In sports outside of football Each power conference sponsors at least 22 sports, with the Big Ten sponsoring the most at 28. Among all NCAA conferences, only two match or surpass the Big Ten's sports sponsorship level. The Ivy League sponsors 32 sports. In the 2025–26 school year, the Division II Conference Carolinas sponsors 26 sports on its own, and partners with other Division II conferences to offer conference-level championships in four more sports. Power Four schools dominate the list of NCAA schools with the most NCAA Division I championships; of the top fifteen schools, only the University of Denver, which last played football in 1960, does not play in a Power Four conference. Power Four schools also generally dominate the standings in the Division I NACDA Directors' Cup and the Capital One Cup, two awards honoring schools with the greatest collegiate athletic success across all sports. For example, the top ten of the 2022-2023 Division I NACDA Directors' Cup standings consisted entirely of power conference programs. The Power Four conferences are not necessarily the most prominent conferences in all sports in which they compete. For example, in men's college basketball, the Big East Conference is also generally considered to be a power conference. In basketball and some other sports, the Division I programs that are not part of the power conferences are often referred to as "mid-major" programs, although the appropriateness of the term has been criticized since some mid-major programs have resources equal to that of some power conference programs. Most notably, Gonzaga, a member of the mid-major West Coast Conference but set to join the reimagined Pac-12 in 2026, is generally considered a power program in men's basketball. The NCAA admitted the maneuver was done in what eventually proved to be an unsuccessful attempt to preempt a proposed alternative tournament to the NIT. By contrast, the NCAA did not use this method of setting the field for the Women's Basketball Invitation Tournament, which it launched in the 2023–24 season as a direct parallel to the NIT. It instead followed the 2006-2023 NIT practice of inviting all regular-season conference champions that failed to make the NCAA tournament, if otherwise eligible for postseason play. Institutional profiles and academics The overall institutional profiles and academic prestige of colleges and universities have a major influence on collegiate athletics conference membership, and athletic conference membership can impact a university's fundraising, academics, and overall reputation. Membership in the Association of American Universities (AAU), a 71-member organization of research universities in the United States and Canada, has frequently been discussed as a factor in conference realignment, particularly for the Big Ten. About half of the Power Four schools are in the AAU, with most of those schools in the ACC or Big Ten, although several are members of the Big 12 or the SEC. The Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, a classification system of universities based on research activity, lists nearly all Power Four schools as "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research spending and doctorate production"; the exceptions are TCU and Wake Forest, each of which is listed as "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research spending and doctorate production". Of the 30 U.S. universities with the greatest research expenditures in 2022, nearly two-thirds were members of one of the power conferences. Some of the Power Four conferences share academic resources among conference members through related academic consortiums such as the Big Ten Academic Alliance and the Atlantic Coast Conference Academic Consortium. Eight Power Four schools that are now officially nonsectarian were founded as faith-based institutions—ACC members Duke, SMU, Syracuse, and Wake Forest, Big Ten members Northwestern and USC, and SEC members Auburn (the only currently public institution among this group) and Vanderbilt. Most became officially nonsectarian in the 20th century. The main exceptions are Auburn, which was taken over by the state of Alabama in 1872 due to financial issues; Northwestern, which committed itself to a nonsectarian admissions policy at its 1851 founding; and SMU, which has been in a legal battle to formally separate itself from the United Methodist Church since 2019, with the school having won an intermediate appeal in the Texas courts in 2021. Another Power Four school, Kentucky, was founded as a publicly chartered department within the faith-based Kentucky University (now Transylvania University) before becoming an independent public institution in 1878. ==See also==