17 Schools•Division I•Est. 1948
The Ohio Valley Conference was born out of conversations that began in 1941 among athletic officials at Murray State, Eastern Kentucky, and Western Kentucky, but World War II delayed the plan. On February 27-28, 1948, those three schools gathered with Louisville, Morehead State, and Evansville at the Kentucky Hotel in Louisville to officially found the OVC — making it the eighth-oldest Division I conference in the country. Today the league has 11 members spread across six states, headquartered in Brentwood, Tennessee, in the Nashville metro area since 1964, and led by Commissioner Beth DeBauche, one of just six women leading a Division I conference. OVC football programs compete in partnership with the Big South Conference as the OV-Big South Football Association at the FCS level, with the 2026 and 2027 FCS Championship games scheduled to be played at FirstBank Stadium on the Vanderbilt campus in Nashville. The OVC has a proud history as a social pioneer — in 1958, Morehead State signed Marshall Banks, making him the conference's first Black athlete, well ahead of most mid-southern institutions. In 1995 the league introduced the nation's first Sportsmanship Statement, a model later adopted widely across college athletics. On the court, the conference produced Ja Morant of Murray State, the No. 2 overall pick in the 2019 NBA Draft and 2019-20 Rookie of the Year, and Danny Willett of Jacksonville State, who won The Masters in 2016. The OVC sponsors 19 NCAA-sanctioned sports and has delivered NCAA Tournament wins in basketball, football, baseball, softball, volleyball, and women's soccer in the past decade alone.
Official Website
The Ohio Valley Conference was born out of conversations that began in 1941 among athletic officials at Murray State, Eastern Kentucky, and Western Kentucky, but World War II delayed the plan. On February 27-28, 1948, those three schools gathered with Louisville, Morehead State, and Evansville at the Kentucky Hotel in Louisville to officially found the OVC — making it the eighth-oldest Division I conference in the country. Today the league has 11 members spread across six states, headquartered in Brentwood, Tennessee, in the Nashville metro area since 1964, and led by Commissioner Beth DeBauche, one of just six women leading a Division I conference. OVC football programs compete in partnership with the Big South Conference as the OV-Big South Football Association at the FCS level, with the 2026 and 2027 FCS Championship games scheduled to be played at FirstBank Stadium on the Vanderbilt campus in Nashville. The OVC has a proud history as a social pioneer — in 1958, Morehead State signed Marshall Banks, making him the conference's first Black athlete, well ahead of most mid-southern institutions. In 1995 the league introduced the nation's first Sportsmanship Statement, a model later adopted widely across college athletics. On the court, the conference produced Ja Morant of Murray State, the No. 2 overall pick in the 2019 NBA Draft and 2019-20 Rookie of the Year, and Danny Willett of Jacksonville State, who won The Masters in 2016. The OVC sponsors 19 NCAA-sanctioned sports and has delivered NCAA Tournament wins in basketball, football, baseball, softball, volleyball, and women's soccer in the past decade alone.
Official Website