The Big East Conference is a collegiate athletics conference consisting of sixteen universities in the eastern half of the United States. The conference's 17 members (15 full-time and 2 associate member) participate in 24 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 other five schools—Seton Hall, St. John's, DePaul, Marquette, and Providence—discontinued their football programs.
In football, the Big East has had all eight members play in bowl games since the 2005 realignment and has had seven of eight teams ranked in the Top 25 since 2003. In that time, the Big East has seen the emergence of new national players with West Virginia rising to as high as No. 1 and was ranked in the Top 10 for three-straight years (2005, 2006, 2007), South Florida rising as high as No. 2, Cincinnati and Louisville both as high as No. 3, Rutgers as high as No. 7, Pittsburgh as high as No. 9, and Connecticut as high as No. 13 in BCS standings. Also, Big East football has seen an increase in attendance and is enjoying a new, $250 million plus television package that lasts through 2013.
In basketball, Big East teams have made 16 Final Four appearances and won six NCAA Championships (UConn with three, Villanova, Georgetown, and Syracuse with one each). Of the Big East's 16 full members, all but South Florida have been to the Final Four, the most of any conference, though Marquette, DePaul, Notre Dame, Rutgers, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh made all their trips before joining the Big East. In 2011, the Big East set the record for the most teams sent to the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship by a single conference with eleven out of their sixteen teams qualifying.
Read more about Big East Conference: Commissioners, Sports, Conference Champions By Year, Facilities
Famous quotes containing the words big, east and/or conference:
“My first big mistake was made when, in a moment of weakness, I consented to learn the game; for a man who can frankly say “I do not play bridge” is allowed to go over in the corner and run the pianola by himself, while the poor neophyte, no matter how much he may protest that he isn’t “at all a good player, in fact I’m perfectly rotten,” is never believed, but dragged into a game where it is discovered, too late, that he spoke the truth.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“Ah! on Thanksgiving day, when from East and from West,
From North and from South, come the pilgrim and guest,
When the gray-haired New Englander sees round his board
The old broken links of affection restored,
When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more,
And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before.
What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye?
What calls back the past, like the rich Pumpkin pie?”
—John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)
“Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)