Big Eight Conference
From Free net encyclopedia
The Big Eight Conference, a former NCAA-affiliated Division I-A college athletic association that sponsored American football, was formed in January 1907 as the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association (MVIAA) by its charter member schools: the University of Kansas, University of Missouri, University of Nebraska, and Washington University of St. Louis. Additionally, the University of Iowa was a joint member of the newly formed MVIAA and the older Western Conference (now the Big Ten Conference). Its first season of play was in 1907 with Nebraska taking the first conference championship.
History
In 1908 saw the departure of Iowa, however the addition of Drake University and Iowa State College (now Iowa State University) increased conference membership to six. Kansas State University joined the conference in 1913. Nebraska left in 1919 to play two seasons as an independent. That year, the conference added Grinnell College, with the University of Oklahoma following suit in 1920; its intrastate rival Oklahoma A&M joined in 1925.
1928 was a pivotal year, splitting the conference. The larger state schools of Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma remained in the MVIAA, which became known informally to fans and the media as the Big Six Conference, while the smaller schools formed a new conference, the Missouri Valley Conference (MVC). The similarity of the two conferences' official names, as well as the competing claims of the two conferences has led to considerable debate over which conference was the original and which was the spin-off. Both conferences considered 1907 as their founding date.
The conference membership remained unchanged until the addition of the University of Colorado in 1948 from the Skyline Conference (a forerunner of the Western Athletic Conference). The conference's unofficial name became the Big Seven Conference. Oklahoma A&M, which by this time had changed its name to Oklahoma State, (re)joined in 1958, and the conference's unofficial name became the Big Eight.
In 1964 the MVIAA officially renamed itself the Big Eight Conference. In 1968 the conference began its long association with the Orange Bowl, sending its champion annually to play to the prestigious bowl game in Miami, Florida.
The conference remained essentially unchanged until 1996, when the eight member schools combined with four former members of the now-defunct Southwest Conference (Baylor University, University of Texas, Texas A&M University, and Texas Tech University) to form the Big 12 Conference. The Big 12 officially regards itself as a new conference. However, despite the official dissolution of the Big Eight, many consider the Big 12 an enlarged version of the old Big Eight, especially among fans of that former conference.
