Big East
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.
Big East Fan Gear
| Cincinnati | Connecticut | Louisville | Pittsburgh | Rutgers | S. Florida | Syracuse | W. Virginia |
History
In football the Big East has re-emerged as an elite conference going 3–0 in BCS bowl games (Louisville once, West Virginia twice) since being re-built and at full-strength. 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 (South Florida rising as high as #2, Rutgers as high as #7, Connecticut as high as #13 and Cincinnati as high as #15). 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. Left for dead after the departure of Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College, the Big East arguably enjoys its greatest success both in football, basketball, television package and financially.
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 respectively. Of the Big East's 16 full members, 15 (or 93%) have been to the Final Four, by far the most of any conference. 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 again in 2008.