The Horizon League is a collegiate athletic conference in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I. Headquartered in Indianapolis, the league's eleven member schools are located in and near the Great Lakes region and in part of the Southern United States.

In May 1978, DePaul University hosted a meeting with representatives from Bradley, Dayton, Detroit, Illinois State, Loyola–Chicago, Air Force, and Xavier who all agreed in principle that a new athletic conference was needed.

Further progress was made through a series of early 1979 meetings in San Francisco, Chicago, and St. Louis that included participation by Butler, Creighton, Marquette, and Oral Roberts.

The MCC gained an automatic bid to the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament in 1981, followed by the announcement that Saint Louis University would be joining the following season.

The latter triggered Notre Dame's temporary withdrawal from the league as its women's teams were contracted to the North Star Conference.

In 1991, the conference received an automatic bid to the NCAA Division I women's basketball tournament and lost members Marquette and Saint Louis.

Duquesne and La Salle joined the MCC in 1992, the same year the conference gained an automatic berth to the NCAA Women's Volleyball Championship.

[2] In April 2013, the split of the original Big East Conference caused a ripple effect that fell to the Horizon League; Loyola announced that it would leave the Horizon League effective July 1 to join the Missouri Valley Conference, which itself lost Creighton to the reconfigured Big East.

The Horizon announced that Oakland University, formerly of the Summit League, would immediately replace Loyola within a month.

[4] The next change in the Horizon League's membership came in 2015 with the arrival of Northern Kentucky University from the Atlantic Sun Conference.

The start of the 2020s set further membership changes into motion, with the arrivals of Purdue Fort Wayne and Robert Morris from the Summit League and the Northeast Conference (NEC), respectively, announced on August 5, 2019[8] and June 15, 2020.

The site serves as a portal to hundreds of live and on-demand videos while giving its users the ability to interact on an array of social media platforms.

This historic stretch of conference dominance was thanks to NCAA Tournament wins from Butler (15), Milwaukee (3), and Cleveland State (1) .

In the 1963 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, Loyola defeated two-time defending champ Cincinnati.

[27] As stated on their official website, the recent success of Horizon League athletic teams on the national stage heightened the visibility of the league and its member schools and quickly moved it closer toward its stated goal of becoming one of the nation's top 10 Division I NCAA athletic conferences.

Milwaukee, who earned a 12 seed in its first bid to the tournament since joining the conference, lost by one point to Notre Dame in the first round.

In the men's 2005 NCAA basketball tournament, the Horizon League enjoyed one of its best showings ever as 12 seed Milwaukee marched to the Sweet 16 with victories over No.

The Panthers, led by first year head coach Rob Jeter, fell to eventual national champion No.

On February 5, 2007, Butler became the first school in Horizon League history to rank in the Top 10 of the national college basketball polls, as the Bulldogs reached No.

21 ranking in the final AP poll, a 5 seed in the NCAA tournament and a Sweet 16 berth by beating Old Dominion and Maryland before losing to eventual national champion Florida.

During the 2007–08 basketball season, Butler won the Great Alaska Shootout with wins over Michigan, Virginia Tech and Texas Tech, and also claimed wins over Ohio State and Florida State, extending their record against BCS schools to 10–1 since the start of the 2006–07 season.

Starting in 2009, regional convenience store and gas station chain Speedway served as the title sponsor of the conference tournament that Cleveland State won and earned the Horizon League's automatic bid to the NCAA Tourney while Butler earned an at-large bid.

13 (AP) (5 seed) Michigan State Spartans 52–50 in the national semifinals, Butler played in Indianapolis against the South Regional Champions, No.

In the 2012 postseason, the Detroit Titans won their first Horizon League Championship since 1999 under head coach Ray McCallum.

The tournament MVP was son Ray McCallum, Jr. Valparaiso was the regular season champion of the Horizon for the second straight year.

Following a good outcome, finishing as the 2014 champions, the Milwaukee Panthers were banned from the 2015 NCAA Tournament and postseason play.

The 2015 season ushered in the arrival of the Northern Kentucky Norse to the league, who departed from the Atlantic Sun Conference.

The Oakland University Golden Grizzles won the conference tournament in 2024 after finishing in the bottom half of the regular season standings.

Also that year, Butler's men's cross country team finished fourth in the nation at the NCAA Cross-Country Championships, and their own Victoria Mitchell became the first Horizon League athlete to win an individual national title when she captured the 3,000 Meter Steeplechase at the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships.

Although the league does not sponsor football, current members Robert Morris and Youngstown State play in Division I FCS.