The

Big Eight Conference The Big Eight Conference was a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)-affiliated Division I-A college athletic association that sponsored American football, football. It was formed in January 1907 as the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate ...

is a defunct

college athletic conference In college athletics in the United States, institutions typically join in Athletic conference, conferences for regular play under different governing bodies. Varsity sports There are several national and regional associations governing the var ...

that was formerly affiliated with the

National Collegiate Athletic Association The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates College athletics in the United States, student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, and Simon Fraser University, 1 in Canada. ...

(NCAA) Division I-A (now known as FBS). The Big Eight was a successful football conference, with its member schools being recognized as consensus national champion on eleven occasions, including the last two football seasons the conference existed (

1994 The year 1994 was designated as the " International Year of the Family" and the "International Year of Sport and the Olympic Ideal" by the United Nations. In the Line Islands and Phoenix Islands of Kiribati, 1994 had only 364 days, omitti ...

and

1995 1995 was designated as: * United Nations Year for Tolerance * World Year of Peoples' Commemoration of the Victims of the Second World War This was the first year that the Internet was entirely privatized, with the United States government ...

). Seven players from the Big Eight won the

Heisman Trophy The Heisman Memorial Trophy ( ; also known simply as the Heisman) is awarded annually since 1935 to the top player in college football. It is considered the most prestigious award in the sport and is presented by the Heisman Trophy Trust followin ...

, the most prestigious national award for college football players.

Membership timeline

DateFormat = yyyy ImageSize = width:1000 height:auto barincrement:30 Period = from:1907 till:1997 TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal PlotArea = right:30 left:0 bottom:50 top:5 Colors = id:barcolor id:line value:black id:bg value:white PlotData= width:20 textcolor:black shift:(5,-5) anchor:from fontsize:m bar:1 color:powderblue from:1947 till:1996 text:

Colorado Colorado is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States. It is one of the Mountain states, sharing the Four Corners region with Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It is also bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas ...

(1947–1996) bar:2 color:powderblue from:1908 till:1928 text:

Drake Drake may refer to: Animals and creatures * A male duck * Drake (mythology), a term related to and often synonymous with dragon People and fictional characters * Drake (surname), a list of people and fictional characters with the family ...

(1908–1928) bar:3 color:powderblue from:1918 till:1928 text: Grinnell (1918–1928) bar:4 color:powderblue from:1907 till:1911 text:

Iowa Iowa ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the upper Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west; Wisconsin to the northeast, Ill ...

(1907–1911) bar:5 color:powderblue from:1908 till:1996 text: Iowa State (1908–1996) bar:6 color:powderblue from:1907 till:1996 text:

Kansas Kansas ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the west. Kansas is named a ...

(1907–1996) bar:7 color:powderblue from:1913 till:1996 text: Kansas State (1913–1996) bar:8 color:powderblue from:1907 till:1996 text:

Missouri Missouri (''see #Etymology and pronunciation, pronunciation'') is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it border ...

(1907–1996) bar:9 color:powderblue from:1907 till:1918 bar:9 color:powderblue from:1921 till:1996 text:

Nebraska Nebraska ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Ka ...

(1907–1918, 1921–1996) bar:10 color:powderblue from:1919 till:1996 text:

Oklahoma Oklahoma ( ; Choctaw language, Choctaw: , ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Texas to the south and west, Kansas to the north, Missouri to the northea ...

(1919–1996) bar:11 color:powderblue from:1925 till:1928 bar:11 color:powderblue from:1958 till:1996 shift:( -250, -5 ) text:

Oklahoma State Oklahoma State University (informally Oklahoma State or OSU) is a public land-grant research university in Stillwater, Oklahoma, United States. The university was established in 1890 under the legislation of the Morrill Act. Originally known ...

(1925–1928, 1958–1996) bar:12 color:powderblue from:1907 till:1928 text: Washington (STL) (1907–1928) ScaleMajor = gridcolor:line unit:year increment:10 start:1907 TextData = fontsize:L textcolor:black pos:(370,30) # tabs:(0-center) text:"Big 8 Membership History"

History

The conference was formed in 1907 as the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association (MVIAA) by five charter schools: the

University of Kansas The University of Kansas (KU) is a public research university with its main campus in Lawrence, Kansas, United States. Two branch campuses are in the Kansas City metropolitan area on the Kansas side: the university's medical school and hospital ...

University of Missouri The University of Missouri (Mizzou or MU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbia, Missouri, United States. It is Missouri's largest university and the flagship of the four-campus Univers ...

University of Nebraska A university () is an educational institution, institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly ...

University of Iowa The University of Iowa (U of I, UIowa, or Iowa) is a public university, public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is organized int ...

, and

Washington University in St. Louis Washington University in St. Louis (WashU) is a private research university in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Founded in 1853 by a group of civic leaders and named for George Washington, the university spans 355 acres across its Danforth ...

. After the MVIAA grew to ten schools, six state schools split away on their own in 1928, becoming known as the "Big Six": Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, Nebraska and

. The

University of Colorado The University of Colorado (CU) is a system of public universities in Colorado. It consists of four institutions: the University of Colorado Boulder, the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, the University of Colorado Denver, and the U ...

was added in 1948, and the conference became known as the "Big Seven Conference".

joined in 1958, becoming the eighth and final member. The conference broke up when its members joined the

Big 12 Conference The Big 12 Conference is a collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference in the United States. It consists of 16 full-member universities (3 private universities and 13 public universities) in the states of Arizona, Colorado, Florida ...

in 1996. Due to its common history with the

Missouri Valley Conference The Missouri Valley Conference (also called MVC or simply "The Valley") is the fourth-oldest collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference in the United States. The conference's members are primarily located in the Midwestern Unite ...

, Big Eight championships from 1907 through 1927 are also claimed by the MVC.

Bowl games

The first Big Eight conference team to attend a

bowl game In North America, a bowl game, or simply bowl, is one of a number of postseason college football games primarily played by NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) teams. For most of its history, the FBS did not use a playoff tourname ...

was

, at the 1924 Los Angeles Christmas Festival. Following the 1938 season

became the second to attend a bowl game, at the fifth-annual

Orange Bowl The Orange Bowl is an annual American college football bowl game played in the Miami metropolitan area. Played annually since 1935 Orange Bowl, January 1, 1935, it is tied with the Sugar Bowl and the Sun Bowl as the second-oldest bowl games in ...

Miami, Florida Miami is a East Coast of the United States, coastal city in the U.S. state of Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade County in South Florida. It is the core of the Miami metropolitan area, which, with a populat ...

. In 1951 and 1952 the conference had a brief ban on its members attending bowl games. When the conference resumed accepting invitations in 1953, its champion regularly thereafter attended the

. This tradition was broken only five times: 1964 (when

faced #2 Arkansas in the Cotton Bowl); 1966 (when Nebraska faced #3 Alabama in the Sugar Bowl); 1973 and 1974 (when undefeated Oklahoma was on probation and barred from bowl games); and 1995 (when #1 Nebraska played in the

Bowl Alliance The Bowl Alliance was an agreement among college football bowl games (specifically the Sugar, Orange, and Fiesta Bowls) for the purpose of trying to match the top two teams in a national championship game and to provide quality bowl game match ...

championship vs. #2 Florida at the Fiesta Bowl). At the 1979 Orange Bowl, #6 Nebraska and #4 Oklahoma were paired against each other in a rematch of their conference game earlier in the season.

Rankings

In the

1971 NCAA University Division football season The 1971 NCAA University Division football season saw Coach Bob Devaney's Nebraska Cornhuskers repeat as national champions. Ranked a close second behind Notre Dame in the preseason poll, Nebraska moved up to first place the following week, rem ...

, Big Eight teams finished ranked #1 (Nebraska), #2 (Oklahoma) and #3 (Colorado) in the nation in the AP Poll – the only time in college football history teams from one conference have held the top three spots in the final poll. In the final AP Poll issued before the Big Eight became the Big 12, half of the conference's teams were ranked in the nation's top 10 (#1 Nebraska, #5 Colorado, #7 Kansas State, #9 Kansas).

Rivalries

The Nebraska–Oklahoma football rivalry was one of the most significant in the nation, with national title implications involved during many seasons. The 1971 Nebraska vs. Oklahoma football game is commonly referred to as "The Game of the Century." With common histories dating back even before the 1907 formation of the conference, many of the Big Eight's rivalries were among the most-played in college football. At the time the Big Eight Conference dissolved in 1996, the conference had the two longest uninterrupted series in Division I-A football: Kansas–Oklahoma (played annually since 1903) and Kansas–Nebraska (played annually since 1906). Many of the conference's series began in the 19th century, including: * Kansas–Missouri, first played in 1891 (second-most played series in Division I-A in 1996) * Nebraska–Kansas, first played in 1892 * Nebraska–Missouri, first played in 1892 * Missouri–Iowa State, first played in 1896 * Nebraska–Iowa State, first played in 1896 * Kansas–Iowa State, first played in 1898 All of the above series except Kansas-Iowa State have been inactive since at least 2012 due to conference realignment.

Champions

Conference champions

Following are the MVIAA/Big Eight football conference champions from 1907 to 1995 (shared championship years are shown in ''italics''): '' ^† Kansas would have won the 1960 title, but after found to be using an ineligible player they were forced to forfeit their victories over Missouri and Colorado, which meant that Missouri was awarded the 1960 Big Eight title.''
'' ^‡

initially won the 1972 title, but after it was found that they used ineligible players, they were penalized by the

NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates College athletics in the United States, student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, and Simon Fraser University, 1 in Canada. ...

, though they did not force OU to forfeit games. The Big Eight asked them to forfeit three games and awarded the title to

, but Oklahoma still claims these wins and this title.''

National championships

Big Eight football teams were recognized as national champion on eleven occasions, including four times as back-to-back champions: * 1950 –

* 1955 –

* 1956 –

* 1970 –

(AP; UPI coaches conducted final poll prior to bowl games and awarded championship to

Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...

) * 1971 –

* 1974 –

(AP; ineligible for UPI coaches poll championship due to NCAA probation.

USC USC may refer to: Education United States * Universidad del Sagrado Corazón, Santurce, Puerto Rico * University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina ** University of South Carolina System, a state university system of South Carolina * ...

named champion of coaches poll) * 1975 –

* 1985 –

* 1990 –

(AP; UPI coaches poll championship awarded to

Georgia Tech The Georgia Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Georgia Tech, GT, and simply Tech or the Institute) is a public research university and institute of technology in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Established in 1885, it has the lar ...

) * 1994 –

* 1995 –

Accolades

The Big Seven Conference established a Coach of the Year award in 1948. The conference began awarding a Player of the Year award in 1967, and began giving separate offensive and defensive awards in 1971. The final awards were given after the 1995 season, after which all of the Big Eight schools entered the

Player of the Year

Offensive Player of the Year

Defensive Player of the Year

Coach of the Year

All-Time Team

After the final Big Eight season was completed in 1995, a panel of twelve longtime observers selected an all-time conference team:

Heisman Trophy winners

Seven players from the Big Eight won the

, the most prestigious national award for college football players:

AFCA Coach of the Year

Eddie Robinson Coach of the Year

References

;General
BigEightSports.com list of football champions
;Specific {{reflist, refs= {{cite news , title=Majors Selected As Coach of Year , newspaper=Lawrence Journal-World , date=November 30, 1971 , accessdate=February 10, 2010 , url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=pCMyAAAAIBAJ&sjid=0uYFAAAAIBAJ&dq=coach-of-the-year%20football%20cyclones%20iowa-state&pg=5265%2C3605511 , page=10 , agency=The Associated Press {{cite news , title=Mac Big 12 Coach of the Year , publisher=CycloneSportsReport.com , agency=CN Staff , date=December 1, 2004 , url=http://iowastate.scout.com/2/325104.html , archivedate=July 16, 2011 , archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110716021138/http://iowastate.scout.com/2/325104.html , url-status=dead