The Big East Conference is a collegiate athletics conference consisting of sixteen universities in the northeastern, southeastern and midwestern United States. The conference's 16 members (15 full-time and 1 associate member) participate in 23 NCAA sports. Eight of the seventeen conference schools are football members and the Big East competes as a BCS conference in the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), the top level of NCAA competition in that sport (also known by its former designation: Division I-A).

Three members have football programs but are not Big East football schools: Georgetown and Villanova compete in the Football Championship Subdivision and Notre Dame plays as an FBS independent. The Big East has had all 8 members play in bowl games since re-alignment and has had 7 of 8 teams ranked in the Top 25 since 2003. The last 3 years the Big East has seen the emergence of new national players (University of South Florida rising as high as #2, Rutgers as high as #6, University of Connecticut as high as #13 and University of Cincinnati as high as #12 in BCS standings).

Also, Big East football has seen an increase in attendance and is enjoying a new, quarter of a billion dollar plus television package that lasts through 2013. In basketball, Big East teams account for 40 Final Four appearances and 10 NCAA Championships, numbers only surpassed by the Big Ten and Pac-10. Of the Big East's 16 full members, 15 (or 94%) have been to the Final Four, by far the most of any conference.

It should be noted that Louisville, Marquette, DePaul, Notre Dame, Rutgers, Cincinnati, West Virginia and Pittsburgh made their trips before joining the Big East. The only full member that has never been to the Final Four is South Florida. The Big East set the record for the most teams sent to the NCAA Tournament by a single conference in 2006, with eight.

The conference tied its own record in 2008.

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