The power conferences are the most prominent athletic conferences in college football in the United States. They are part of the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) of the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Division I, the highest level of collegiate football in the nation, and are considered the most elite conferences within that tier. Power conferences have provided most of the participants in the College Football Playoff (CFP) and its predecessors, and generally have larger revenue, budgets, and television viewership than other college athletic programs. The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), Big Ten Conference, Big 12 Conference, and Southeastern Conference (SEC) are currently recognised as power conferences.
For decades, the most prominent conferences sent their teams to postseason bowl games, but the season frequently ended with multiple teams claiming the national championship. After the 1990 and 1991 seasons ended with consecutive split championships, several of the most prominent conferences and bowl games formed the Bowl Coalition (1992–1994), and later the Bowl Alliance (1995–1997), to provide a definitive national champion. In 1998, the six largest conferences—the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Big East, SEC, and Pac-12—and the four most prominent bowl games—the Fiesta, Orange, Rose and Sugar Bowls—formed the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), with conference champions awarded Automatic Qualifying (AQ) status to the bowl games and, provisionally, the National Championship Game.
The defection of three Big East members to the ACC after the 2005 conference realignment saw its stature gradually diminish, and it eventually split into two following a realignment in the early 2010s; at the same time, the BCS was reorganised into the College Football Playoff, and the remaining AQ conferences were collectively referred to as the Power Five. A further realignment in the early 2020s saw the Pac-12 left with only two members after the 2023 season; the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, and SEC now form the Power Four, with further suggestions that the Big Ten and SEC, the two conferences with the largest media contracts and many of the most prestigious programs, currently form a "Power Two" tier above the ACC and Big 12.
As of the 2024 season, the FBS has 134 members, divided between the Power Four, five other conferences known as the Group of Five (G5), the Pac-12, and three independent schools. The term power conference is not defined by the NCAA, but the conferences are identified individually under NCAA rules as "autonomy conferences", which grants them some independence from standard NCAA rules. The power conferences also compete in other collegiate sports, but are not necessarily the most prominent in each sport; for example, in men's college basketball, the modern Big East, which does not sponsor football, is also considered to be a power conference.