Missouri Valley Conference

The MVC was established in 1907 (its charter member schools: the University of Kansas, University of Missouri, University of Nebraska, and Washington University in St. Louis) as the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association (MVIAA), 12 years after the Big Ten Conference, the only Division I conference that is older. It is the fourth-oldest college athletic conference in the United States, after the Big Ten Conference and the NCAA Division III's Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association (MIAA) and Ohio Athletic Conference (OAC).^[1][2]

The MVIAA split in 1928, with most of the larger schools (the University of Kansas, University of Missouri, University of Nebraska, Iowa Agricultural College (now Iowa State University), Kansas State University, and University of Oklahoma) forming a conference that retained the MVIAA name; this conference evolved into the Big Eight Conference. The Big Eight merged with four Texas schools of the Southwest Conference to form the Big 12 Conference in 1996.^[3]

The smaller MVIAA schools (Drake, Grinnell and Washington University in St. Louis), plus Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State University, which joined the Big Eight in 1957), were joined by Creighton to form the MVC, which retained the old MVIAA's administrative staff.

To this day, it has never been definitively established which conference was the original and which was the spinoff, though the Big Eight would go on to become the more prestigious of the two.^{[citation needed]} During the Big Eight's run, both conferences claimed 1907 as their founding date, and the same history through 1927.

MVC teams held a 74–27 non-conference record during the 2006–07 college basketball season, including a record of 44–1 at home. The Valley finished in the top six of the RPI and ahead of a BCS conference for the second consecutive year, while also garnering multiple NCAA bids for the ninth straight year and 12th of 14.^[4]

The MVC has not sponsored football since 1985, when it was a hybrid I-A/I-AA (now FBS and FCS, respectively) conference. However, five members have football programs in the Missouri Valley Football Conference (MVFC) (known as the Gateway from 1985 to 2008) of Division I FCS, and two others compete in another FCS conference, the Pioneer Football League. The Missouri Valley Conference shares its name with the MVFC, and all three conferences operate from the same headquarters complex in St. Louis; however, the three are separate administratively.

After weeks of speculation,^[5][6] Wichita State announced on April 7, 2017, that it would leave the conference to join the American Athletic Conference starting with the 2017–18 season.^[7] The conference announced it extended an invitation to Valparaiso University on May 9, 2017;^[8] and on May 25, the MVC announced that Valparaiso would officially join the following July 1.^[9]

The most recent changes to the core MVC membership were announced during the 2021–22 school year. On September 28, 2021, the MVC and Belmont University jointly announced that the school would leave the Ohio Valley Conference for the MVC effective July 1, 2022.^[10] Then, on November 16, Loyola University Chicago announced it would leave the MVC at the same time, joining the Atlantic 10 Conference.^[11] On the same day Loyola announced its departure, CBS Sports reported that the MVC was actively pursuing further expansion, having entered into talks with the University of Missouri–Kansas City (known athletically as Kansas City), Murray State University, and the University of Texas at Arlington (UT Arlington). The report indicated that the latter two were considered the strongest candidates, but that all three were likely to receive invitations in the coming months.^[12] On January 7, 2022, the MVC announced that Murray State would officially join the conference on July 1 of that year.^[13] UT Arlington would soon remove itself from the list of candidates by announcing a 2022 move to the Western Athletic Conference.^[14]

Shortly before Murray State was officially announced as an incoming MVC member, Matt Brown of the Extra Points college sports blog reported that the MVC was also in membership discussions with the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), then a member of the Horizon League. On the same weekend that Murray State's arrival was officially announced, MVC officials made a site visit to UIC. Brown's sources indicated that an invitation to UIC was likely. Brown noted that with the MVC losing Loyola, league officials believed that maintaining a presence in the city was a top priority, stating (emphasis in original):^[15]

Throughout this process, multiple administrators at MVC institutions stressed the importance of getting access to new urban areas to recruit more students, not just athletes. With so many schools depending heavily on Chicago, and especially Chicago's suburbs, for enrollment, continuing to have a presence in the city was seen as a major priority.

On January 22, 2022, Matt Norlander of CBSSports.com reported that UIC's July entry to the MVC was "a done deal", with his sources indicating that the MVC wanted to announce the move before the Conference Commissioners Association held its annual meeting in Naples, Florida in early February.^[16] UIC's entry was officially announced on January 26.^[17]

On May 10, 2024, Missouri State announced it would leave the MVC to transition to the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) and join Conference USA, effective for the 2025–26 season.^[18]

The MVC's decades-long ties with the MVFC were formalized when the latter announced a new conference structure on May 5, 2025, taking effect that July. Under the new structure, the MVFC's top two administrative positions will be filled by the commissioners of the MVC and the also non-football Summit League, and both multisport conferences will share administrative operations. The MVC and Summit are the full-time conference homes of all but one of the MVFC's 10 members in the 2025 season.^[19]

1. C. E. McClung (1907–19??)^[31]
2. Arthur (Artie) E. Eilers (1925–1957)^[31]
3. Norvell Neve (1957–1969)^[31][32]
4. DeWitt T. Weaver (1969–1972)^[31]
5. Mickey Holmes (1972–1979)^[33][31]
6. David Price (1979–1981)^[34][31]
7. Richard D. Martin (1981–1985)^[31]
8. James A. Haney (1985–1988)^[35][31]
9. Doug Elgin (1988–2021)^[31][36]
10. Jeff Jackson (2021–present)

The Missouri Valley Conference sponsors championship competition in eight men's and ten women's NCAA sanctioned sports.^[37] Ball State (men), Little Rock (women), and Miami (OH) (men) are affiliates in swimming and diving, and Bowling Green, Northern Illinois, and Western Michigan are affiliates in men's soccer.

The most recent change to the roster of sports came in the 2024–25 school year, when the MVC reinstated men's swimming & diving after a 22-year absence. The inaugural season of the relaunched league features 7 sponsoring members, with full members Evansville, UIC, Missouri State, Southern Illinois, and Valparaiso joined by new affiliates Ball State and Miami (OH)— previously, all these programs were housed in the Mid-American Conference.^[38]

Note

1. For football venues of the member schools who participate in the sport, see Missouri Valley Football Conference | Facilities and Pioneer Football League | Conference facilities.

The Missouri Valley Conference men's basketball tournament is often referred to as Arch Madness, in reference to the Gateway Arch at the tournament's present location of St. Louis, Missouri, and a play on "March Madness". The women's tournament is currently promoted as Hoops in the Heartland.

NB: Missouri State was known as Southwest Missouri State until August 2005.

School – Number – NCAA championships

• Belmont
• Bradley – 2 ^[53]
• Drake – 3 ^[53]
• Evansville – 0+5* ^[53]
• UIC - 0+2* ^[53]
• Illinois State – 0+1* ^[53]
• Indiana State – 1 ^[53]
• Missouri State – 0 +2* ^[53]
• Murray State
• UNI – 1+2* ^[53]
• Southern Illinois – 5+3* ^[53]
• Valparaiso – 0^[53]

NCAA Championships as of March 2013

(*-Titles won by schools in Division II/College Division prior to their moving to Division I in the late 1960s or early 1970s)

Football poll, Helms and AIAW titles are not included in the NCAA Championship count.

Sources:^[54][55][56]

The Valley is well known for having some of the most dedicated fanbases in all of college basketball, with several members regularly selling out their large arenas on a nightly basis throughout the year. Former member Creighton had the sixth highest attendance for Division I in 2012–13, while Bradley, Illinois State, Missouri State, and Indiana State were all among the NCAA's top 100 teams in home attendance.

In 2010–11, 2011–12, and 2012–13, the Valley maintained its position as the eighth ranked conference in average attendance.

The Valley made history in March 2007, with record attendance for four days at St. Louis' Scottrade Center as 85,074 fans turned out to watch the five sessions of the conference tournament. The two sellout crowds of 22,612 for the semifinals and final of the 2007 tournament set an all-time attendance record for basketball at the arena and also gave the Valley the distinction of having the largest championship crowd for any of the 30 NCAA conference tournaments in 2007.^[57]

• All MVC schools that currently play football are part of the Missouri Valley Football Conference except for Drake and Valparaiso, which play in the Pioneer Football League.

Since at least 1993, the MVC has produced an in-house package of sports as part of the MVC TV Network.^[58]Starting in 1996, those telecasts were produced, in part, by Bally Sports Midwest (formerly Fox Sports Midwest). These games were distributed to regional sports networks including Bally Sports Indiana, Bally Sports Kansas City, Bally Sports South, Bally Sports Southeast, and NBC Sports Chicago (now Chicago Sports Network), as well as shown on Bally Sports Midwest.^[59] Until the 2020–21 season, some of these telecasts also aired on Fox College Sports. Outside of regional networks these telecasts were also available on ESPN3 until the 2018–19 season; those telecasts were then migrated over to ESPN+.^[60]

Starting with the 2024–25 academic year, production and distribution rights were acquired by Gray Media, with Gray Media-owned Indianapolis-based Tupelo Honey handling the actual production and distribution.^[61] It is a linear over-the-air station package distributed in Gray Media markets within the MVC member states of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee as well as third-party broadcast partners in markets within those same states where Gray Media has no presence; in addition, simulcasts will be available live nationally (via ESPN+ and through the ESPN app) without any digital blackouts (prior contracts prohibited simulcast availability within the MVC footprint).

The MVC TV Network serves as the home for the opening and quarterfinal rounds of Arch Madness (the nickname for the MVC men's basketball tournament).

• Missouri Valley Conference Hall of Fame