Big East Conference (1979–2013)

The Big East Conference was a collegiate athletics conference that consisted of as many as 16 universities in the eastern half of the United States from 1979 to 2013. The conference's members participated in 24 NCAA sports. The conference had a history of success at the national level in basketball throughout its history, while its shorter (1991 to 2013) football program, created by inviting one college and four other "associate members" (their football programs only) into the conference, resulted in two national championships.

In basketball, Big East teams made 18 Final Four appearances and won 7 NCAA championships as Big East members through 2013 (UConn with three, Georgetown, Syracuse, Louisville and Villanova with one each). Of the Big East's full members, all but South Florida attended 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 Division I Men's Basketball Championship by a single conference with eleven out of their sixteen teams qualifying.

In football, the Big East entered competition as a conference in 1991, after inviting five football colleges to become members of the Big East, joining three teams from the Big East whose football teams were competing as Division I independents (Boston College, Pittsburgh and Syracuse) to form a new Division I football league. The strength of this league earned the Big East an automatic berth in the Bowl Championship Series, when that series was created in 1998. The Big East won two national football championships, both by University of Miami. Between 2005 and 2012, four of the more successful football schools left the Big East for other conferences, starting a process that led to a complete realignment of the Big East in 2013.

On July 1, 2013, the non-football playing schools (also known collectively as the Catholic 7) formed a non-football playing conference that purchased the Big East Conference name. The remaining six football-playing members, three of whom had only joined the Big East in 2005 when the earlier exodus had started, joined with four schools from other conferences to become the American Athletic Conference (The American/AAC), which is the Big East's legal successor. The American retains the Big East's football structure and inherited its single automatic berth in the Bowl Championship Series. However, both conferences claim 1979 as their founding date, and the same history up to 2013. As of the 2023–24 season, South Florida is the only full member of the original Big East that still plays in the AAC today.