The Big Eight Conference was a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)-affiliated Division I-A college athletic association that sponsored football. It 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 in St. Louis. Additionally, the University of Iowa was an original member of the MVIAA, while maintaining joint membership in the Western Conference (now the Big Ten Conference).

The conference was dissolved in 1996. Its membership at its dissolution consisted of the University of Nebraska, Iowa State University, the University of Colorado at Boulder, the University of Kansas, Kansas State University, the University of Missouri, the University of Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State University. The Big Eight kept its headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri.

In February 1995, the Big Eight and the Southwest Conference announced that the two leagues had reached an agreement to form a new conference. The eight members of the Big Eight joined with SWC schools Texas, Texas A&M, Baylor, and Texas Tech to form the Big 12 Conference the following year. A vote was conducted on whether to keep the new conference's headquarters in Kansas City, and by a vote of 7–5 the conference members voted to move to the Dallas, Texas suburb of Irving. The two Oklahoma schools, all four Texas schools, and Colorado voted for the move while both Kansas schools, Nebraska, Missouri, and Iowa State voted for Kansas City.

The Big Eight Conference is an athletic conference currently comprising six IHSAA Class AAA high schools located in Southwestern Indiana with one IHSA Class AAA member in Southern Illinois. The conference members are small city-based schools located in Daviess, Dubois, Gibson, Knox, Posey, and Warrick counties in Indiana and Wabash County in Illinois.

History

The Big Eight Conference was created in 1980 when seven members of the Southern Indiana Athletic Conference (Boonville, Jasper, Mount Vernon, Princeton, Tell City, Vincennes Lincoln, and Washington) left to form a new conference with a member of the Pocket Athletic Conference (Gibson Southern). Gibson Southern left in 1992 to rejoin the PAC and Tell City followed in 2001 also to rejoin the PAC, reducing the Big Eight to six members. Mount Carmel joined in 2003 to increase the membership to seven. Currently Mount Carmel, located in Illinois, is the only school from outside Indiana to compete in an Indiana athletic conference.

The Big Eight Conference was a high school athletic league in Iowa made up of some of the largest schools in the state.

Members

History

The Big Eight Conference was formed in 1963 when Des Moines North and Des Moines East left the old Big Six Conference to compete in the Metropolitan Conference. The league's four remaining members (Fort Dodge, Mason City, and the Waterloo schools) reached out to other large schools in central Iowa to rebuild the conference. Cedar Falls joined from the Northeast Iowa Conference and Ames, Marshalltown, and Newton joined from the Central Iowa Conference.

From the onset, the league was one of the strongest in the state. In its first year of competition, league schools captured state championships in four of the seven sports the IHSAA conducted championships for at the time. The league also claimed the first two 5-on-5 girl's basketball titles in state history (for many years the IGHSAU only sponsored 6-on-6 basketball). Among other notable achievements, the league also had a stronghold on the boy's cross country title for 12 years, winning a state title all but one year from 1964 to 1975.