The original Big East The original Big East Conference was founded in 1979, when Providence College basketball coach
Dave Gavitt spearheaded an effort to assemble an east coast basketball-centric collegiate athletic conference. The core of the Big East formed when
Providence,
St. John's,
Georgetown, and
Syracuse invited
Seton Hall,
Connecticut (UConn),
Holy Cross,
Rutgers, and
Boston College (BC). Holy Cross turned down the invitation, as did Rutgers initially, while BC, Seton Hall, and UConn accepted. Gavitt became the Big East's first commissioner, and
Villanova and
Pittsburgh joined the conference shortly thereafter. PR firm
Duffy & Shanley is credited with the initial branding and naming work for the conference. The "high point" of the original conference is widely considered to be the 1985 NCAA tournament, in which Georgetown, St. Johns, and Villanova all made the Final Four, and Villanova defeated Georgetown to win the national championship. The conference remained largely unchanged until 1991, when it began to sponsor football, adding
Miami as a full member, and Rutgers,
Temple,
Virginia Tech, and
West Virginia as football-only members. Rutgers and West Virginia upgraded to full Big East membership in 1995, while Virginia Tech did the same in 2000.
Notre Dame also joined as a non-football member effective in 1995. Temple football was kicked out after the 2004 season due to what was deemed by the other football-playing members a failure to make a strong effort to field a competitive team, but rejoined in 2012 after seriously upgrading its football program and intended to become a full Big East member in 2013. The unusual structure of the Big East, with the "football" and "non-football" schools, led to instability in the conference. The Big East was one of the most severely impacted conferences during conference realignment of 2005 and
the early 2010s. In all, 14 member schools announced their departure for other conferences, and 15 other schools announced plans to join the conference (eight as all-sports members, and four for football only). Three of the latter group later backed out of their plans to join (one for all sports, and the other two for football only). These waves of defection and replacement revealed tension between the football-sponsoring and non-football schools that eventually led to the split of the conference in 2013.
Split and re-founding On December 15, 2012, the Big East's seven non-FBS schools –
DePaul,
Georgetown,
Marquette,
Providence,
St. John's,
Seton Hall, and
Villanova – announced that they had voted unanimously to separate from the Big East football-playing schools. The schools splitting away were referred to as the "Catholic 7" due to their common religious background, and were motivated in part by a desire to return to Gavitt's original vision of a strong,
Northeast-based and basketball-focused conference, The move occurred during a limited window in which these non-FBS schools held a voting majority in the conference—after the defection of certain FBS schools to the ACC but before the effective inclusion of candidate FBS schools to replace them. Negotiations with the other member schools continued in early 2013, and in March, it was reported that the "Catholic 7" schools would leave the conference on June 30, 2013, but that they would retain the Big East Conference name, logos, $10 million from the old conference's treasury, and the right to hold their
Big East Men's Basketball Tournament at
Madison Square Garden. At a March 20 news conference in New York City, Georgetown President
John J. DeGioia, representing this new conference, announced that
Butler University and
Xavier University, both then members of the
Atlantic 10 Conference, as well as
Creighton University in the
Missouri Valley Conference would also join the new league at its launch. Additional announcements confirmed their headquarters in New York City, and a 12-year, $500 million television contract with
Fox Sports and
its networks, and a 6-year television contract with
CBS and its
CBS Sports Network. On June 26, 2013, the new conference hired
Val Ackerman, former
WNBA president, as the conference's first commissioner. Several AAC and former Big East schools however continued playing lacrosse and field hockey with the new Big East Conference in 2013, including
Rutgers and
Louisville, before moving their programs to the
Big Ten and
Atlantic Coast Conferences respectively in 2014–15. AAC members
UConn and
Temple also both joined the new Big East for women's lacrosse and field hockey, while
Cincinnati joined the women's lacrosse league,
Denver joined the men's lacrosse league, and
Old Dominion joined the field hockey league. The launch of a women's lacrosse league in the Big Ten for the 2015 season caused the
American Lacrosse Conference (ALC) to dissolve after the 2014 season; two
Southeastern Conference teams that had been ALC members,
Florida and
Vanderbilt, joined the Big East as associate members in that sport. The next changes to Big East associate membership came during the 2015–16 school year. First, on December 8, 2015, the conference announced that
Liberty and
Quinnipiac would become associate members in field hockey effective with the 2016 season. Then, on May 3, 2016, the Big East announced that Denver, already an affiliate in men's lacrosse, would move its women's lacrosse team into the league in the 2016–17 school year (2017 season). In addition to the new associate members, full member Butler announced on October 21, 2015, that it would elevate its club team in women's lacrosse to full varsity status in the 2017 season and immediately begin Big East competition. The American Conference began sponsoring women's lacrosse in the 2019 season (2018–19 school year), which led to the departure of all then-current Big East women's lacrosse associates except Denver. On that same date, the Big East announced that field hockey member Old Dominion would also become a Big East women's lacrosse member in the 2019 season, maintaining Big East women's lacrosse membership at 6 teams and preserving its automatic berth to the NCAA women's tournament.
Return of UConn In June 2019, various news outlets reported that UConn would soon leave the AAC for the Big East, pending a decision on the future of
the school's football program. Many news stories described UConn as "rejoining" the Big East, because UConn was a founding member of the original Big East, but remained with the football-playing members when the conference reorganized as the AAC in 2013. By 2018 however, UConn had seen a dramatic decline in athletic department revenues. Mutual interest between UConn and the new Big East had been reported by several sources starting in 2016. On June 24, 2019, the Big East formally approved an invitation for UConn to join the conference. The UConn Board of Trustees accepted the invitation two days later, thus reuniting UConn with several of the schools against whom it competed for 34 years in the old Big East. UConn and the AAC reached a buyout agreement the following month, clearing the way for UConn to become a member of the Big East on July 1, 2020. At the time the buyout agreement was reported, UConn announced that its football team would become an
FBS independent upon its arrival in the Big East, leaving Temple as the only AAC member in the northeast. UConn's men's & women's hockey teams remain a member of the
Hockey East Association. In 2020, Old Dominion's women's lacrosse left the Big East for the AAC, essentially swapping places with UConn, so both conferences maintained the six members required for an automatic bid.
Associate Member Changes On November 16, 2022, the Big East announced that
The University of Akron would join as an associate member in men's soccer for the 2023-24 season, following the suspension of the
Mid-American Conference men's soccer league. On November 10, 2025,
Quinnipiac University announced that it would depart the Big East in field hockey for the
Northeast Conference following the 2025-26 season. ==Commissioners==