Big East Conference

The Big East Conference is a college sports conference in the United States which sponsors many sports, but does not play football. The league has its roots in the original Big East Conference, which was founded in 1979 as a basketball-focused league by a group of schools in the Eastern U.S. That league added football in 1991, leading to years of conflict between schools that played top-level football and those that did not. In July 2013, the original league split along football lines. The seven schools that did not play FBS (top-level) football—often called the "Catholic 7" because all are run by the Catholic Church—bought the "Big East" name and formed a new Big East. The FBS schools joined with several new members and stayed in the original Big East structure under the new name of American Athletic Conference (The American).

Although the current Big East was not founded until 2013, it claims the 1979 founding date of the original Big East. Both the current Big East and The American claim the pre-split history of the old Big East.