Grinnell College was previously considered a part of the Big Four prior to their demotion to NCAA Division III athletics when they were members of the MVIAA and Missouri Valley Conference.

[1] In the 2000s, Iowa State, wanting to gain a greater presence in the Des Moines area, offered and played multiple games at Wells Fargo Arena with various teams.

In 2013 the event was moved to the first Saturday of December, but attendance from students preparing for finals dropped considerably so the event was moved back to the third Saturday, although all four universities host December Commencement exercises on the day.

Initially there was hope for both games making it to national television audiences, however this has largely been unsuccessful to date due to college football bowl games and other established basketball events on the same day nationally.

This has resulted in Drake and UNI making a much larger profit than they did, although it does come at the expense of the loss of a major home game each year.

As Drake and Northern Iowa cannot play each other in the classic due to their Missouri Valley Conference affiliations, there is no way to formally determine an official champion between the four schools in a tournament-style format.

[8] While Iowa and Iowa State have not ruled out further participation, comments by both schools indicate that they would prefer to not play games in Des Moines and would rather play home games at each school's respective home arena.