NCAA Sports Blog

The Big East Conference is a collegiate athletics conference consisting of seventeen universities in the northeastern, southeastern and midwestern United States. The conference’s 17 members (16 full-time and 1 associate member) participate in 23 NCAA sports. The schools that are Big East members in football - which are actually only eight of the 11 conference schools that sponsor varsity football - are part of the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), the top level of NCAA competition in that sport (still frequently known by its former designation of Division I-A). 

In basketball, teams currently in the Big East account for 40 all time Final Four appearances and 10 National Championships, numbers only surpassed by the Big Ten and Pac-10 respectively. Of the Big East’s 16 full members, 15 (or 93%) have been to the Final Four, by far the most of any conference. The only full member that has never been to the Final Four is South Florida.

The Big East was founded in 1979 when Providence, St. John’s, Georgetown, and Syracuse invited Seton Hall, Connecticut, and Boston College to form a conference primarily focused on basketball. Villanova joined a year later in 1980 and Pittsburgh joined in 1982. Big East regents rejected Penn State’s application for admission into the Big East in 1982, since the conference at that time was only focused on basketball. 

Almost a decade later the Big East was serious about becoming a major football conference and added five schools, including four time champion Miami, Temple, Virginia Tech, West Virginia, and Rutgers. The inaugural Big East football season was launched in 1991. West Virginia and Rutgers were football-only members until 1995, Virginia Tech was a football-only member until 2001, with Temple remaining a football-only member until consistently failing to attract enough fan support and vacating its membership in 2004. Notre Dame was also offered a non-football membership as of 1995. 

Big East Sports Offered 

    * Baseball

    * Women’s and Men’s Basketball

    * Women’s and Men’s Cross Country

    * Football

    * Field Hockey

    * Women’s and Men’s Golf

    * Women’s Lacrosse

    * Women’s Rowing

    * Women’s and Men’s Soccer

    * Softball

    * Women’s and Men’s Swimming & Diving

    * Women’s and Men’s Tennis

    * Women’s and Men’s Indoor & Outdoor Track

    * Volleyball 

This led to an unusual structure since not all members of the conference competed in Division I-A (now FBS) football. This had long led to rumors of instability, and in 2003, ongoing press reports of tensions between the football schools and the basketball schools finally exploded into a months-long public tug-of-war between the Big East and the Atlantic Coast Conference over several Big East members. The end result was that three Big East schools - Virginia Tech, Miami and Boston College - moved to the ACC, while five teams moved to the Big East from Conference USA - Louisville, Cincinnati, South Florida, Marquette, and DePaul. For more details on this topic, see Realignment. 

The addition of the three football schools, along with Big East non-football member Connecticut moving up to the Big East football conference, ensured that the league would keep the minimum eight teams needed to keep its BCS bid. In addition two traditional basketball teams, DePaul and Marquette, were added to gain the Chicago/Milwaukee TV market and help the already solid basketball status of the conference. 

The Big East currently represents the majority of the large, athletically competitive private Catholic schools, with public schools Pittsburgh, Louisville, Rutgers, and Cincinnati also being located in areas with large Catholic communities. Five of the founding seven schools are Catholic schools - Providence, St. John’s, Georgetown, Seton Hall, and Boston College. 

In January 2006, Loyola College was added as an associate member in the sport of women’s lacrosse. 

Big East schools compete in Division I in basketball and Olympic sports. Football members of the conference participate in Division I FBS. Notre Dame remains an FBS independent, while Georgetown and Villanova have Division I FCS (formerly I-AA) football programs. Georgetown football competes in the Patriot League. Villanova competed in the Atlantic Ten through the 2006 season, but along with all other members of the A-10 football conference joined the new football conference launched by the Colonial Athletic Association in 2007.

Members

Full member institutions include:

Associate Members 

    * Loyola College (women’s lacrosse) 

Former Members 

    * Boston College (1979-2005)

    * Temple University (1991-2005) - Football Only

    * University of Miami (1991-2004)

    * Virginia Tech (1991-2004) - Football only member 1991-1999, full member 2000-2004)

Basketball: 

2006-2007 Average Men’s Basketball Attendance 

The Big East was founded by seven charter schools in 1979 (Providence, St. John’s, Georgetown, Syracuse, Seton Hall, UConn, and Boston College) with the intent of creating a powerhouse basketball conference. Villanova joined the following year, followed by Pittsburgh in 1982. 

It wouldn’t take long for the conference to meet its original aim, with Georgetown, led by freshman Patrick Ewing, making the NCAA Championship Game (losing to the Michael Jordan-led North Carolina Tar Heels. Just two years later in 1984 Georgetown won the Big East’s first NCAA basketball championship with a victory over the University of Houston. 

The following year three Big East teams (Villanova, St. John’s, and Georgetown) all advanced to the Final Four, culminating in Villanova’s stunning championship game victory over the heavily-favored Hoyas. The conference’s 1985 success was nearly duplicated in 1987, when Syracuse and a surprising Providence both made the Final Four, followed by the Orangemen’s narrow loss to Indiana University in the tournament final. Two years later, the Seton Hall Pirates also advanced to the NCAA Championship Game, but were defeated by the University of Michigan Wolverines in a controversial overtime heartbreaker. 

Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Georgetown, led by John Thompson, was one of the primary powers in the conference, led by Ewing, Alonzo Mourning, and Dikembe Mutombo. 

Since the late 1990s, basketball in the Big East has been led by UConn, under the guidance of Jim Calhoun and Pittsburgh (since the early 2000s) under Ben Howland and later, Jamie Dixon. UConn won a national championship in 1999. The Big East held back to back national championships as Syracuse won a title under Jim Boeheim in 2003, and UConn again in 2004. Other teams have enjoyed recent success from 2004 to present, including WVU and Villanova. Georgetown, now coached by Thompson’s son John III, made the 2007 Final Four, while UConn remains the last Big East team to win a national championship (the aforementioned title in 2004). The Big East has a very long and distinguished list of former players currently playing in the NBA with some of the most recent being Allen Iverson, Ray Allen, Richard “Rip” Hamilton, Ben Gordon, Emeka Okafor, Carmelo Anthony, Hakim Warrick, Randy Foye, Kyle Lowry, Rudy Gay, Marcus Williams, Hilton Armstrong, Josh Boone, Samuel Dalembert and Charlie Villanueva. 

In the 2006 season the Big East got a record eight teams into the NCAA tournament. These teams were Syracuse, West Virginia, Pittsburgh, Marquette, UConn, Seton Hall, Villanova, and Georgetown. 

Big East women’s basketball is nearly as powerful as the conference’s men’s programs. UConn coach Geno Auriemma has led the women’s team to five national championships (including four between 2000 and 2004) and two undefeated seasons (1995 and 2002). UConn set the record for longest winning streak in all of NCAA women’s basketball history with a 70 game winning streak stretching from 2001-2003. This streak was ended in 2003 when Villanova beat UConn for the Big East tournament title, in what is considered one of the biggest upsets in women’s basketball (Villanova would go on to reach the Elite Eight that year). Under the strength of the UConn program, and to a lesser extent Boston College, 2007 national runnerup Rutgers, and 2001 national champion Notre Dame, the Big East has emerged as one of the major powers in women’s college basketball.

Football: 

 Big East began football during the 1991-1992 season with the addition of Miami and was a founding member of the Bowl Championship Series. The league obtained immediate legitimacy with the addition of powerhouse Miami. 

In the league’s first years the University of Miami dominated, winning nine of the first thirteen championships and two national championships in 1991 and 2001. Virginia Tech also did well, winning the conference in 1995 and 1996 and earning a number 2 national ranking in 1999. West Virginia and Syracuse were the only other teams to win conference titles during the league’s original alignment. 

The conference experienced a major reconstruction when Miami and Virginia Tech left for the Atlantic Coast Conference in 2004, followed by Boston College in 2005. 

The universities that replaced them were Louisville, USF and Cincinnati from Conference USA to join. The league also invited the University of Connecticut to play football a year earlier than planned. 

After the completion of the regular season, Pittsburgh received the Big East’s automatic BCS berth with a #21 ranking. In the Fiesta Bowl, Pitt was trounced, 35-7, by undefeated Utah, the first team from a non-BCS conference (the Mountain West) to qualify for the lucrative bowls.

At about this time, the BCS announced that it would adjust the automatic bids granted to its six founding conferences based on results from 2004-07, and that there would be five, six, or seven such bids starting in 2008. The obvious inference was that soon the Big East might lose its bid, and the Mountain West might gain one. 

The conference’s fortunes improved in 2005. The three new teams from Conference USA began play that year, restoring the league to eight teams. West Virginia won the conference title, defeated SEC champion Georgia in the Sugar Bowl, and finished 11-1 and finished #5 in the AP poll. Newcomer Louisville also ranked in the top 20. 

In 2006, the Big East’s troubles became a distant memory. West Virginia, Louisville, and Rutgers all entered November undefeated. They did not stay that way, as in a trio of exciting games over the next month receiving national attention, Louisville defeated West Virginia 44-34, Rutgers defeated Louisville 28-25 (in the most watched weeknight college football game in history), and West Virginia defeated Rutgers 41-39 (in three overtimes). Rutgers’ resurgence after a century of mostly futile play was a national story, but Louisville won the conference title in the end. In bowl action, the Big East went 5-0, including an Orange Bowl victory for Louisville over surprise ACC champion Wake Forest and a win by West Virginia over ACC championship game runner-up Georgia Tech. 

Louisville ended the year ranked #6, West Virginia #10, and Rutgers #12. 

The league made noise early in the 2007 season when USF, behind upsets of then #17 Auburn and #5 West Virginia, debuted at #2 in the initial BCS rankings. They lost their next three games, however, to drop out of the rankings completely. Showing the depth of the conference, the Connecticut Huskies have taken up the slack and appear poised to join West Virginia in the top 10.