Big Eight Conference


The Big Eight Conference was a National Collegiate Athletic Association -affiliated Division I-A college athletic association that sponsored football. It was formed in January 1907 as the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association by its charter member schools: the University of Kansas, University of Missouri, University of Nebraska, and Washington University in St. Louis. Additionally, the University of Iowa was an original member of the MVIAA, while maintaining joint membership in the Western Conference.
The conference's membership at its dissolution consisted of the University of Nebraska, Iowa State University, the University of Colorado at Boulder, the University of Kansas, Kansas State University, the University of Missouri, the University of Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State University. The Big Eight's headquarters were located in Kansas City, Missouri.
In February 1994, all eight members of the Big Eight Conference and four of the members of the Southwest Conference announced that the 12 schools had reached an agreement to form the Big 12 Conference. From a conventional standpoint, the Big 12 was a renamed and expanded version of the Big Eight, but from a legal standpoint, the Big Eight ceased operations in 1996, and its members joined with the four SWC schools to form the Big 12 the following year.

History

Formation

The conference was founded as the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association at a meeting on January 12, 1907, of five charter member institutions: the University of Kansas, the University of Missouri, the University of Nebraska, Washington University in St. Louis, and the University of Iowa, which also maintained its concurrent membership in the Western Conference. However, Iowa only participated in football and outdoor men's track and field for a brief period before leaving the conference in 1911.

Early membership changes

In 1908, Drake University and Iowa Agricultural College joined the MVIAA, increasing the conference's membership to seven. Iowa, which was a joint member, departed the conference in 1911 to return to sole competition in the Western Conference, but Kansas State University joined the conference in 1913. Nebraska left in 1918 to play as an independent for two seasons before returning in 1920. In 1919, the University of Oklahoma and Saint Louis University applied for membership but were not approved due to deficient management of their athletic programs. The conference then added Grinnell College in 1919, with the University of Oklahoma applying again and being approved in 1920. Oklahoma A&M University joined in 1925, bringing conference membership to ten, an all-time high.

Split into Big Six Conference

At a meeting in Lincoln, Nebraska, on May 19, 1928, the conference split up. Six of the seven state schools formed a conference that was initially known as the Big Six Conference. Just before the start of fall practice, the six schools announced they would retain the MVIAA name for formal purposes. However, fans and media continued to call it the Big Six. The three private schools – Drake, Grinnell, and Washington University – joined with Oklahoma A&M to form the Missouri Valley Conference. The old MVIAA's administrative staff transferred to the MVC.
The similarity of the two conferences' official names, as well as the competing claims of the two conferences, led to considerable debate over which conference was the original and which was the spin-off, though the MVIAA went on to become the more prestigious of the two. For the remainder of the Big Eight's run, both conferences claimed 1907 as their founding date, as well as the same history through 1927. To this day, it has never been definitively established which conference was the original.

Big Seven adds Colorado

Conference membership grew with the addition of the University of Colorado on December 1, 1947, from the Mountain States Conference. Later that month, Reaves E. Peters was hired as "Commissioner of Officials and Assistant Secretary" and set up the first conference offices in Kansas City, Missouri. With the addition of Colorado, the conference's unofficial name became the Big Seven Conference, coincidentally, the former unofficial name of the MSC.

Big Eight adds Oklahoma State

The final membership change happened ten years later, when Oklahoma A&M, newly renamed Oklahoma State, joined the conference on June 1, 1957, and the conference became known as the Big Eight. However, Oklahoma State did not begin conference play until the 1958–59 season for basketball and the 1960 season for football. Peters' title was changed to "Executive Secretary" of the conference in 1957. He retired in June 1963 and was replaced by Wayne Duke, whose title was later changed to "Commissioner".
In 1964, the conference legally assumed the name Big Eight Conference. In 1968 the conference began a long association with the Orange Bowl, sending its champion annually to play in the prestigious bowl game in Miami, Florida, all except the 1974 Orange Bowl and the 1975 Orange Bowl. Instead, Big Eight representative Nebraska Cornhuskers played in the 1974 Cotton Bowl Classic and the 1974 Sugar Bowl.

Formation of the Big 12 Conference

In the early 1990s, most of the colleges in Division I-A were members of the College Football Association; this included members of the Big Eight and Southwest Conferences. Following a Supreme Court decision in 1984, the primary function of the CFA was to negotiate television broadcast rights for its member conferences and independent colleges. In February 1994, the Southeastern Conference announced that they, like the Big Ten, Pac-10, and Notre Dame before them, would be leaving the CFA and negotiating independently for a television deal that covered SEC schools only. This led The Dallas Morning News to proclaim that "the College Football Association as a television entity is dead". More significantly, this change in television contracts ultimately would lead to significant realignment of college conferences, with the biggest change being the dissolution of the Big Eight and Southwest Conferences and the formation of the Big 12.
After the SEC's abandonment of the CFA, the Southwest Conference and the Big Eight Conference saw potential financial benefits from an alliance to negotiate television deals, and quickly began negotiations to that end, with ABC and ESPN. On February 25, 1994, it was announced that a new conference would be formed from the members of the Big Eight and four of the Texas member colleges of the Southwest Conference. Though the name would not be made official for several months, newspaper accounts immediately dubbed the new entity the "Big 12". Charter members of the Big 12 included the members of the Big Eight plus Baylor, Texas, Texas A&M and Texas Tech.

Dissolution

Following the formation of the Big 12 Conference in 1994, the Big Eight continued operations until August 30, 1996, when the conference was formally dissolved and its members officially began competition in the Big 12 Conference.
Although the Big 12 was essentially the Big Eight plus the four Texas schools, the Big 12 regards itself as a separate conference and does not claim the Big Eight's history as its own.

Members

Final members

Previous members

Membership timeline


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bar:1 color:Full from:1907 till:1911 text:Iowa
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bar:5 color:Full from:1921 till:1996
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bar:8 color:Full from:1913 till:1996 text:Kansas State
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bar:9 color:Full from:1918 till:1928 text:Grinnell
bar:10 color:Full from:1919 till:1996 text:Oklahoma
bar:10 color:FMBig8 from:1996 till:end text:Big 12
bar:11 color:Full from:1925 till:1928 text:Oklahoma A&M
bar:11 color:OtherC1 from:1928 till:1958
bar:11 color:Full from:1958 till:1996 text:Oklahoma State
bar:11 color:FMBig8 from:1996 till:end text:Big 12
bar:12 color:Full from:1947 till:1996 text:Colorado
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