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The Big Ten Conference (stylized B1G, formerly the Western Conference and the Big Nine Conference) is the oldest Division I collegiate athletic conference in the United States. Founded as the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representatives in 1896, it predates the founding of its regulating organization, the NCAA. It is based in the Chicago area in Rosemont, Illinois. For many decades the conference consisted of 10 prominent universities, which accounts for its name. As of 2014, it consists of 14 member institutions and 2 affiliate institutions, with 4 new member institutions scheduled to join in 2024. The conference competes in the NCAA Division I and its football teams compete in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), formerly known as Division I-A, the highest level of NCAA competition in that sport. Big Ten member institutions are major research universities with large financial endowments and strong academic reputations. A large student body is a hallmark of its universities, as 12 of the 14 members enroll more than 30,000 students. They are all public universities except founding member Northwestern University as the lone private university, but will be joined by private University of Southern California at the beginning of the 2024–25 collegiate athletic year. Collectively, Big Ten universities educate more than 520,000 total students and have 5.7 million living alumni. The members engage in $9.3 billion in funded research each year; 13 out of 14 are members of the Association of American Universities and all are members of the Universities Research Association (URA). All Big Ten universities are also members of the Big Ten Academic Alliance, formerly the Committee on Institutional Cooperation. Although the Big Ten has primarily been a Midwestern conference for nearly a century, the conference's geographic footprint has extended from the Mid-Atlantic to the Great Plains since 2014, and will also have a presence in the West Coast with the addition of four former Pac-12 Conference schools in 2024. Member universities Current full members Notes: Membership map Future members On June 30, 2022, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the University of Southern California (USC) announced plans to withdraw from the Pac-12 Conference to join the Big Ten in 2024 as full members. On August 4, 2023, the University of Oregon and the University of Washington also announced their withdrawal from the Pac-12 to join the Big Ten on August 2, 2024. Affiliate members Notes Former member The University of Chicago was the only full member to have left the Big Ten Conference. Notes Membership timeline Full members  Full members (non-football)  Sport affiliate  Other conference  Other conference  History Early history As intercollegiate football rapidly increased during the 1890s, so did the ruthless nature of the game. Tempers flared, fights erupted, and injuries soared. Between 1880 and 1905, college football players suffered more than 325 deaths and 1,149 injuries. To deal with mounting criticism of the game, Purdue University president James Henry Smart invited the presidents of the University of Chicago, University of Illinois, Lake Forest College, University of Minnesota, Northwestern University, and University of Wisconsin to a meeting in Chicago on January 11, 1895, to create policies aimed at regulating intercollegiate athletics. The eligibility of student-athletes was one of the main topics of discussion. The Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representatives was founded at a second meeting on February 8, 1896. Lake Forest was not at the 1896 meeting and was replaced by the University of Michigan. At the time, the organization was more commonly known as the Western Conference, consisting of Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Chicago, Purdue, and Northwestern. These schools were the original seven members. The conference is one of the nation's oldest, predating the founding of the NCAA by a decade and was one of the first collegiate conferences to sponsor men's basketball. The Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association was also established in 1895; its successor, the Southern Conference, eventually spawned the Southeastern Conference and the Atlantic Coast Conference. The first reference to the conference as the Big Nine was in 1899 after Iowa and Indiana had joined. Nebraska first petitioned to join the league in 1900 and again in 1911, but was turned away both times. In 1905, the conference was officially incorporated as the "Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representatives". In April 1907, Michigan was voted out of the conference for refusing to adhere to league rules limiting football teams to no more than five games and players to three years of eligibility. Ohio State joined in 1912. The first known references to the conference as the Big Ten were in December 1916, when Michigan rejoined the conference after a nine-year absence. 1940s: Chicago Leaves and Michigan State Joins The conference was again known as the Big Nine after the University of Chicago decided to de-emphasize varsity athletics just after World War II. In 1939 UChicago President Robert Maynard Hutchins made the decision to abolish the football program, based on his negative views of big-time college football's excesses and associated problems of the time. Chicago withdrew from the conference in 1946 after struggling to obtain victories in many conference matchups. It was believed that one of several schools, notably Iowa State, Marquette, Michigan State, Nebraska, Notre Dame, and Pittsburgh would replace Chicago at the time. On May 20, 1949, Michigan State ended the speculation by joining and the conference was again known as the Big Ten. The Big Ten's membership would remain unchanged for the next 40 years. The conference's official name throughout this period remained the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representatives. It did not formally adopt the name Big Ten until 1987, when it was incorporated as a not-for-profit corporation. 1990 expansion: Penn State In 1990, the Big Ten universities voted to expand the conference to 11 teams and extended an invitation to Atlantic 10 member and football independent Pennsylvania State University, which accepted it. When Penn State joined in 1990, it was decided the conference would continue to be called the Big Ten, but its logo was modified to reflect the change; the number 11 was disguised in the negative space of the traditionally blue "Big Ten" lettering. Missouri showed interest in Big Ten membership after Penn State joined. Around 1993, the league explored adding Kansas, Missouri and Rutgers or other potential schools, to create a 14-team league with two football divisions. These talks died when the Big Eight Conference merged with former Southwest Conference members to create the Big 12. Following the addition of Penn State, efforts were made to encourage the University of Notre Dame.... Discover the Jonathan Smith Leah Lacrosse popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Jonathan Smith Leah Lacrosse books.