Big West Conference

The Big West Conference is a NCAA conference that plays in the NCAA Division I. The conference is based in Irvine, California and currently features universities and colleges from the state of California, although a school from Hawaii will join in July 2012.

Members

This is a list of colleges and universities who play sports in the Big West. Only one current member, Pacific, is a private school; all of the others are public schools, with an equal number from the University of California and California State University systems.

• California Polytechnic State University ("Cal Poly"; sometimes "Cal Poly SLO", from its home city of San Luis Obispo)
• California State University, Fullerton ("Cal State Fullerton")
• California State University, Northridge ("Cal State Northridge")
• California State University, Long Beach ("Long Beach State")
• University of the Pacific
• University of California, Davis ("UC Davis")
• University of California, Irvine ("UC Irvine")
• University of California, Riverside ("UC Riverside")
• University of California, Santa Barbara ("UC Santa Barbara")

In July 2012, the University of Hawaii at Manoa ("Hawaii") will join the conference. One year later, Pacific will leave to join the West Coast Conference, while San Diego State University will return to the Big West after a 35-year absence.

The conference once sponsored football, but dropped the sport in 2000. Two of its current members and both future members play football in other conferences:

• Cal Poly and UC Davis will leave the Great West Conference for the Big Sky Conference in July 2012.
• The Hawaii football team will leave the Western Athletic Conference for the Mountain West Conference in July 2012.
• San Diego State is now in the Mountain West, but the football team will move to the Big East Conference in July 2013.

References

• "Big West Conference". bigwest.org. http://www.bigwest.org/. Retrieved 2012-02-16.