Big Ten Conference

▪ American athletic conference

formerly  Western Intercollegiate Conference 

      one of the oldest college athletic conferences in the United States, formed in 1896 by the Universities of Chicago (Chicago, University of), Illinois (Illinois, University of), Michigan (Michigan, University of), Minnesota (Minnesota, University of), and Wisconsin (Wisconsin, University of) and Purdue (Purdue University) and Northwestern (Northwestern University) universities. The University of Iowa (Iowa, University of) and Indiana University were added in 1899 and Ohio State (Ohio State University) in 1912. Chicago terminated its football program in 1939 and officially withdrew from the conference in 1946, and the conference did not again include 10 teams until Michigan State (Michigan State University) was added in 1949. Pennsylvania State University joined the Big Ten in 1990.

      The Big Ten traditionally has been one of the strongest gridiron football conferences in the nation. Together with the Pacific-10 Conference, the Big Ten resisted the overcommercialization of college football by allowing only one member team to compete in a bowl game each year, a policy that stood until 1975. From 1947 to 2001, the Big Ten sent a representative team, usually its conference champion, to the Rose Bowl, oldest of the postseason invitational events. This exclusive arrangement ended when the Rose Bowl, which became part of the Bowl Championship Series in 1998, hosted its first national championship game in January 2002.

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