Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Power Five conferences" in English language version.
The Power 5 refers to five conferences, including the SEC, considered the elite of collegiate football.
The Big East began the Bowl Championship Series era in 1998 as one of six privileged football leagues. It has now been re-cobbled among the Gilligan's Island "And the Rest" leagues along with the Mid-American, Sun Belt, Conference USA and the Mountain West.
Even though the system is usually stacked in their favor, the haves — schools from the traditional power five conferences, the Southeastern, Atlantic Coast, Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac-10 — are already bent out of shape.
In 2014, the [NCAA Division I Board of Directors] created a new 'autonomy' model, granting the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC the ability to make some of their own rules together, which happened the next year with full cost-of-attendance scholarships. The autonomy group became colloquially known as the 'Power 5' and regularly held its own meetings, but didn't do much else legislatively with that autonomy power.
No one is under the impression the new Pac-12 will be the Pac-12 of old...It's essentially going to be a new Group of 5-level conference, hoping to be in the strongest position to earn that fifth CFP auto-bid.
In 1928, the MVIAA split into two conferences, both retaining the MVIAA name officially, but the one involving the larger schools took "Big Six" as a descriptive moniker. The Big Six were Oklahoma, Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, Nebraska and Iowa State. Drake, Grinnell, Washington and Oklahoma A&M were in the second MVIAA conference, which was known familiarly as the Missouri Valley.
But the [Metro Conference] didn't sponsor football and it needed to grow if it intended to survive against the heavies of that time: the SEC, ACC, Southwest Conference, Big Eight, Big Ten and Pac-10.
