Power conferences
[5] Since 2014, the power conferences have held some autonomy from the rest of Division I in regard to issues such as stipends and recruiting rules.
Notre Dame is considered equal to the Power Four schools, being a full (with the exception of football) member of the ACC with an annual five-game football scheduling agreement with that conference; Notre Dame also has its own national television contract and its own arrangement for access to the CFP-affiliated bowl games should it meet stated competitive criteria.
Compared to the Group of Five, power conference schools have significantly higher revenue, due to television deals with major networks and streaming services.
[12] In 2022, college football games between power conference teams made up five of the ten most-watched non-NFL sporting events among U.S. viewers.
[15] This revenue advantage allows Power Four conferences to pay higher salaries to coaches[10] and invest in expensive athletic facilities and amenities.
[28] The four highest-ranked conference champions receive first-round byes, while the remaining eight teams play in the opening round of the playoffs at the home fields of the higher seeds.
[30] Motivated in large part by fatalities and injuries sustained in college football, President Theodore Roosevelt worked with various collegiate athletic programs to establish the NCAA in 1906.
The Southwest Conference (SWC) was formed in 1914 by several schools in Texas and neighboring states, and after some early defections would maintain stable membership into the 1990s.
The Southern Conference in turn later experienced the departure of its most prominent teams, first with the secession of 13 schools located south or west of the Appalachians to form the SEC in 1932.
In lieu of an actual national championship, these bowl games provided a way to match up teams from distant regions of the country that did not otherwise play.
In 1936, the Associated Press began its weekly poll of prominent sports writers, ranking all of the nation's college football teams.
The Big Ten and Pac-10 declined to join either group in favor of continuing to send their respective champion to the Rose Bowl, contributing to split national championships during some seasons in the 1990s.
Notre Dame remained an independent in football, but had guaranteed access to the BCS bowls when it met certain defined performance criteria.
[53] The conferences in this group were:[54] The BCS faced several controversies throughout its tenure, driven largely by teams and fans dissatisfied at being left out of the championship game.
[62] The new playoff system drew strong television ratings, helping to boost the profile of college football and specifically to the Power Five conferences, who constituted all but one of the CFP participants in the four-team era, and the remaining FBS programs.
[63] Like the BCS, the new system endured a series of controversies related to teams being left out of the championship process, both among the Power Five and the Group of Five, leading many to call for a playoff.
[66] Another Group of Five team, the 2017 UCF Knights,[F] was left out of the CFP, but proclaimed themselves the national champion after going undefeated in the regular season and winning the 2018 Peach Bowl.
[34] During another phase of realignment in 2005, three schools (Boston College, Miami-FL and Virginia Tech) jumped from the Big East to the ACC, and Temple also left the conference (before eventually returning in 2013).
[76][34] College football underwent another major conference realignment from 2010 to 2014, as the Big Ten and Pac-10 sought to become large enough to stage championship games.
[80] BYU's initial announcement stated that it would join in 2023,[81] and the other three schools' 2023 entry date was confirmed after they reached a buyout agreement with The American.
[87] This realignment led to Pac-12 being considered a de facto member of the Group of Five,[74] and fueled discussion that the Big Ten and the SEC might ultimately emerge as the "Power Two" conferences.
[90][91][92] In a 2022 article, FiveThirtyEight described the Big Ten as the first "major college athletics league" to be bicoastal (the Big Ten would later be joined by the ACC in this distinction after the latter conference added Stanford and California), adding that the average distance between FBS conference members was set to increase from 336 miles to 412 miles.
Ten "non-AQ" teams appeared in the nine following BCS games, with an overall record of 5-3: Of these appearances, all were via automatic qualifying bids, except Boise State's participation in the highly controversial 2010 Fiesta Bowl in which the Broncos were selected via at-large bid and played fellow BCS Buster TCU.
For example, the top ten of the 2022-2023 Division I NACDA Directors' Cup standings consisted entirely of power conference programs.
Most notably, Gonzaga, a member of the mid-major West Coast Conference but set to join the reimagined Pac-12 in 2026, is generally considered a power program in men's basketball.
[107] The awarding of the majority of home court games to the Power Five prompted St. Bonaventure University, which had for the previous decade declined bids to private postseason tournaments for financial reasons but had accepted NIT bids, to preemptively rule itself out of the 2024 NIT, with the university stating that it could not justify entering a tournament that effectively required its team to go on the road with no opportunity for home games.
[109] By contrast, the NCAA did not use this method of setting the field for the Women's Basketball Invitation Tournament, which it launched in the 2023–24 season as a direct parallel to the NIT.
It instead followed the pre-2024 NIT practice of inviting all regular-season conference champions that failed to make the NCAA tournament, if otherwise eligible for postseason play.
[121][114] Out of all Power Four schools, only five are religiously affiliated: Baylor, Boston College, BYU, Notre Dame, and TCU.
The main exceptions are Northwestern, which committed itself to a nonsectarian admissions policy at its 1851 founding; and SMU, which has been in a legal battle to formally separate itself from the United Methodist Church since 2019, with the school having won an intermediate appeal in the Texas courts in 2021.
