Power Five conferences

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The Power Four conferences (or P4), known before 2024 as the Power Five conferences (or P5), are the most prominent athletic conferences in college football in the United States. They are part of the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) of NCAA Division I, the highest level of collegiate football in the nation, and are considered the most elite conferences within that tier. The Power Four conferences have provided most of the participants in the College Football Playoff since its inception, and generally have larger revenue, budgets, and television viewership than other college athletic programs.

The Power Four conferences are the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), Big Ten Conference, Big 12 Conference, and Southeastern Conference (SEC). The FBS consists of the Power Four, other conferences known as the Group of Five (G5), and a small number of independent schools. The power conferences previously included the original incarnation of the Big East Conference^{[citation needed]} and the Pac-12 Conference, the latter of which lost most of its members in the 2021–2024 NCAA conference realignment. The term Power Four is not defined by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), but the Power Four conferences are identified individually under NCAA rules as "autonomy conferences", which grants them some independence from standard NCAA rules to provide additional resources for the benefit of student-athletes.

Each of the power conferences existed for decades before the establishment of the College Football Playoff, with the oldest power conference, the Big Ten, founded in 1896. Prior to the establishment of the College Football Playoff in 2014, the Power Five conferences, as well as the Big East, received an automatic berth in one of the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) bowl games. The power conferences also compete in numerous sports outside of football, but are not necessarily the most prominent conferences in each individual sport. For example, in men's college basketball, the modern Big East Conference is also generally considered to be a power conference.