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The original was posted on /r/cfb by /u/lordeandtaylor on 2026-04-23 17:32:48+00:00.
I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while, but now I finally have time. I’m going to a complete history of additions and departures for each FBS conference from their founding until now. This series will focus on football, so I won’t mention additions and departures for non-football members. Each day for the next ten days, I’ll do one conference. I was going to do it in two posts, but the Big Ten post was longer than I thought so I’m going to do ten posts instead. I will do them in this order: Big Ten, SEC, Big 12, ACC, PAC-12, American, Mountain West, MAC, C-USA, and finally the Sun Belt.
The Big Ten
The Big Ten traces its origins to the founding of the Western Conference in 1896 by seven original members: Purdue, Chicago, Illinois, Northwestern, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Lake Forest College was at the initial meeting in 1895 but was not at the subsequent 1896 meeting where the conference was officially formed, and thus was never a member. Iowa and Indiana joined in 1899 and the conference was informally known as the Big Nine as early as that year. Ohio State became the 10th member in 1912, and the conference officially became known as the Big Ten in 1916.
The Big Ten’s membership has been remarkably stable since 1916. Chicago dropped its football program in 1939 and then withdrew from the conference completely in 1946. After considering Nebraska and Pittsburgh to replace Chicago (the former of which had attempted to join in 1900 and 1911 and been rejected both times), the conference settled on Michigan State as its tenth member in 1949. After adding Michigan State, the conference’s membership remained constant at ten until the 1990s.
In 1990, the Big Ten added its 11th member: Penn State. Penn State was an independent in football and a member of the Atlantic 10 in other sports. Penn State made the decision to join the Big Ten over the Big East because their previous application to join the Big East in 1982 had been rejected.
The Big Ten explored adding schools like Missouri and Notre Dame in the later part of the 90s, but talks with both those schools ultimately came to nothing. The Big Ten would ultimately remain at 11 members until 2010, when they publicly announced their intention to expand. In 2011, Nebraska, which had attempted to join the Big Ten at least three times previously and been rejected each time, finally got their wish and became the 12th member of the Big Ten, departing the Big 12 to join. The Big Ten remained at 12 teams for three years until 2014, when they expanded to 14 members. Maryland abandoned their longstanding ACC membership to become the 13th member while Rutgers, stuck in the American after the collapse of the old Big East, was picked up by the Big Ten as the fourteenth member.
The Big Ten expanded most recently in 2024, following the collapse of the old PAC-12. The first domino to fall was USC and UCLA, who in 2022 jointly announced that they would become the 15th and 16th members of the Big Ten by 2024. USC and UCLA’s departure opened the floodgates on a mass exodus from the PAC-12, and in 2023 the league announced that Oregon and Washington would follow their compatriots in California and become the 17th and 18th members of the conference. The four former PAC-12 teams joined the Big Ten officially ahead of the 2024 football season, and the Big Ten reached its current number of 18 members.
The Big Ten has had some of the most stability of any conference. Since its founding in 1896, the only school to leave is the University of Chicago. One departure is the fewest of any conference.