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. Eight of the seventeen conference schools are football members and the Big East competes as a BCS conference in the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), the top level of NCAA competition in that sport (also known by its former designation: Division I-A). Three members have football programs but are not Big East football schools: Georgetown and Villanova compete in the Football Championship Subdivision and Notre Dame plays as an FBS independent.

The Big East has also had all 8 of their members play in bowl games since re-alignment and have had 7 of their 8 teams in the Top 25 since 2003. The last 3 years the Big East has seen the emergence of new national players (University of South Florida rising as high as #2, Rutgers as high as #6, University of Connecticut as high as #13 and University of Cincinnati as high as #12 in BCS standings). Big East football has also seen an increase in attendance and is enjoying a new, quarter of a billion dollar plus television package that lasts through 2013.

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. Of the Big East's 16 full members, 15 (or 94%) have been to the Final Four, by far the most of any conference, although it should be noted that Louisville, Marquette, DePaul, Notre Dame, Rutgers, Cincinnati, West Virginia and Pittsburgh made their trips before joining the Big East. The only full member that has never been to the Final Four is South Florida. The Big East set the record for the most teams sent to the NCAA Tournament by a single conference in 2006, with eight. The conference tied its own record in 2008.

History

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. Also in 1982, Penn State applied for membership, but was rejected by a 5-3 vote. It was longed rumored that Syracuse cast the deciding vote against Penn State, but Mike Tranghese confirmed that this was not the case and that Syracuse had, in fact, voted for Penn State's inclusion.

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. Penn State joined the Big Ten Conference. 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.