page_title: Power Five conferences
section_title: Under the BCS system
hierarchical_section_title: Power Five conferences / Under the BCS system
context_page_description: In college football, the term Power Five conferences refers to five athletic conferences whose members are part of the Football Bowl Subdivision of NCAA Division I, the highest level of collegiate football in the United States. The conferences are the Atlantic Coast Conference, Big Ten Conference, Big 12 Conference, Pac-12 Conference, and Southeastern Conference. The term "Power Five" is not defined by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, and the origin of the term is unknown. It has been used in its current meaning since at least 2006. The term is also occasionally used in other college sports, although in many non-football sports, most notably basketball, anywhere from six to eight conferences may be considered "high-major".
  The Power Five conferences make up five of the ten conferences in FBS; the other FBS conferences are informally known as the Group of Five. The FBS consists of the Power Five, the Group of Five, and a small number of independent schools.
context_section_description: From 1998 to 2013, the top teams in Division I FBS played in the BCS. It consisted of four or five bowl games, with a national championship game either rotating among the bowl sites (prior to the 2006 season) or played as a separate game. The BCS succeeded two other systems that were put in place after the 1991 season in order to ensure that one national champion could be crowned at the end of the season. The original Bowl Coalition consisted of the SEC, the Big Eight Conference (later succeeded by the Big 12), the Southwest Conference (SWC), the ACC, the Big East, and Notre Dame. The BCS added the Pac-10 (now known as the Pac-12) and the Big Ten, while the SWC dissolved in 1996. In 2013, the Big East split into two conferences, and its successor, the American Athletic Conference (The American), took the Big East's place for the 2013 season.
  In addition to creating a national championship game, the BCS also created a set format for other major bowls. After the two top teams in the BCS rankings were matched up in the BCS National Championship Game, the other three or (after the 2005 season) four bowls selected other top teams. The term "BCS conference" was used by many fans to refer to one of the six conferences whose champions received an automatic berth in one of the five BCS bowl games, although the BCS itself used the term "automatic qualifying conference" (AQ conference). While the number of AQ conferences was technically variable, the BCS always had six AQ conferences since its inception in 1998. The Mountain West Conference (MW) was perhaps the closest of the other conferences to getting AQ status, but its request for AQ status was denied in 2012. Each of the bowls had a historic link with one or more of the six BCS conferences with the exception of the former Big East, and the bowl games selected a team from each of these conferences if it was eligible for a BCS bowl and not playing in the national title game. The conferences included in this group, with their traditional bowl links, were:
  Big East Conference (The American in 2013) (not tied to any specific BCS bowl)
  Atlantic Coast Conference (Orange Bowl)
  Big 12 Conference (Fiesta Bowl)
  Big Ten Conference (Rose Bowl)
  Pac-12 Conference (Rose Bowl)
  Southeastern Conference (Sugar Bowl)
  Notre Dame is an independent in football, but was a founding member of the BCS. Because of the "Notre Dame rule", it had guaranteed access to the BCS bowls when it met certain defined performance criteria.
  The other five conferences (listed below) were non-AQ conferences because they did not receive an annual automatic bid to a BCS bowl game. The highest ranked champion of any non-AQ conference received an AQ bid if they ranked in the top 12 of the final BCS poll or ranked in the top 16 and higher than a champion of an AQ conference.
  The conferences in this group were:
  Conference USA (C-USA)
  Mid-American Conference (MAC)
  Mountain West Conference (MW)
  Sun Belt Conference
  Western Athletic Conference (WAC) – dropped football after the 2012 season, following a near-complete membership turnover that saw the league stripped of all but two of its football-sponsoring schools
  Ten "non-AQ" teams appeared in the nine following BCS games, with an overall record of 5-3:
  2005 Fiesta Bowl: Utah (MW) 35, Pittsburgh 7
  2007 Fiesta Bowl: Boise State (WAC) 43, Oklahoma 42 (OT)
  2008 Sugar Bowl: Georgia 41, Hawaiʻi (WAC) 10
  2009 Sugar Bowl: Utah (MW) 31, Alabama 17
  2010 Fiesta Bowl: Boise State (WAC) 17, TCU (MW) 10
  2011 Rose Bowl: TCU (MW) 21, Wisconsin 19
  2013 Orange Bowl: Florida State 31, Northern Illinois (MAC) 10
  Of these appearances, all were via automatic qualifying bids, except Boise State's participation in the highly controversial 2010 Fiesta Bowl in which the Broncos were selected via at-large bid and played fellow BCS Buster TCU.
caption: A map of every university in the automatic qualifying conferences in 2013.