Power Five conferences

A request that this article title be changed to Power Four conferences is under discussion. Please do not move this article until the discussion is closed.

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, five other conferences known as the Group of Five (G5), the two-member Pac-12 Conference, and a small number of independent schools. 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. 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.

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. Beginning in the early 20th century, many top college football teams competed in postseason bowl games, but a lack of coordination frequently led to multiple teams claiming the national championship. In 1998, the current Power Four conferences joined with the Pac-12, the original incarnation of the Big East Conference, and Notre Dame to create the Bowl Championship Series (BCS). The BCS would determine the college football FBS national champion until it was supplanted by the College Football Playoff in 2014. The Big East split into two conferences in 2013, and its football successor, the American Athletic Conference, is part of the Group of Five. The Pac-12 was a member of the Power Five Conferences until most of its members left for other power conferences in 2024.