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Origins of the power conferences
College football originated in the Northeastern United States in the final third of the 19th century, with the 1869 Princeton vs. Rutgers football game often considered to be the first college football game. The schools that would eventually form the Ivy League dominated college football in the 19th century and for parts of the 20th century, claiming numerous national championships. The Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association (SIAA) was founded in 1894, while several Midwestern schools founded the Big Ten (then known as the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representatives or the "Western Conference") in 1896. Several of the larger schools split off from the SIAA in 1921 to form the Southern Conference, which later experienced the departure of its most prominent teams, leading to the formation of the SEC in 1932 and the ACC in 1953. Motivated in large part by fatalities and injuries sustained in college football, President Theodore Roosevelt worked with various collegiate athletic programs to establish the NCAA in 1906.

The Southwest Conference (SWC) was formed in 1914 by several schools in Texas and neighboring states. The Pacific Coast Conference (PCC) was founded in 1915, but disbanded in 1959 following a "pay-for-play" scandal. Some of the former members of the Pacific Coast Conference formed the Athletic Association of Western Universities (AAWU) that same year, and by 1968 the AAWU had renamed itself as the Pac-8 and contained most of the former members of the PCC. The Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association (MVIAA) was formed in 1907, and in 1928 the MVIAA split into two conferences, with the larger schools from the MVIAA forming the Big Six Conference. The Big Six later expanded to eight teams in 1957, becoming known as the Big Eight Conference.

The Ivy League was officially founded in the 1950s, but the football programs of Ivy League schools declined in stature after World War II, and the conference ultimately dropped down to Division I-AA in 1982. Until the 1990s, many top programs, particularly in the Northeast, played as football independents. Many of these independents were affiliated with the Big East Conference, the Atlantic 10 Conference (A-10), or the Metro Conference, each of which were founded in the 1970s as non-football conferences. In 1962, several members of the Skyline Conference and the Border Conference founded the Western Athletic Conference (WAC). Although generally not considered a power conference, four of the six founding WAC members would ultimately join one of the Power Five conferences, and the 1984 BYU Cougars football team won the national championship. NCAA divisions were created in 1973 when the largest schools were placed in Division I, and in 1978, Division I football programs were further sub-divided into Division I-A (later Division I FBS) and Division I-AA (later Division I FCS).

Rise of bowl games and precursors to the BCS
The Rose Bowl, a postseason game matching top teams from the West with top teams from the East, was first played in 1902 and became a yearly tradition in 1916. As college football grew beyond its regional affiliations in the 1930s, it garnered increased national attention. Four new bowl games were created: the Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl, and Sun Bowl in 1935, and the Cotton Bowl in 1937. In lieu of an actual national championship, these bowl games provided a way to match up teams from distant regions of the country that did not otherwise play. In 1936, the Associated Press began its weekly poll of prominent sports writers, ranking all of the nation's college football teams. Since there was no national championship game, the final version of the AP poll was used to determine who was crowned the national champion of college football.

The first college football game was televised in 1938, and as universities began to widely televise their games after World War II, the NCAA took control of television broadcast rights in 1951 and restricted the number of games that a program could air on television. The 1984 Supreme Court case NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma spurred a round of conference realignment by ending the NCAA's monopoly on television rights of college football games, instead granting the rights to individual schools and conferences. With the exception of Notre Dame, all of the major independent programs joined a conference in the early 1990s. Many of the independents in the Northeast and elsewhere on the Eastern Seaboard joined the Big East, which began playing football in 1991. Other independent schools joined the Big Ten, the ACC, or the SEC, and in 1992 the SEC became the first Division I conference to hold a conference championship game for football. The Southwest Conference dissolved in the wake of a series of scandals and concerns over an insufficiently large television market, and four teams from that conference joined with the Big 8 to create the Big 12 Conference in 1994. The remaining SWC schools joined the WAC or the newly-formed Conference USA, though most would later join one of the Power Five conferences; other future power conference schools such as Louisville and BYU also played in the WAC or Conference USA during the 1990s.

By the middle of the 20th century, the Rose Bowl matched up the Big Ten champion against the champion of the PCC and its successors, the Sugar Bowl generally hosted the conference champion of the SEC, and the Cotton Bowl generally hosted the conference champion of the SWC. The Orange Bowl often hosted the champion of the Big Eight, though it would later develop close ties with the ACC. The Fiesta Bowl was initially founded in 1971 to host the WAC champion, but later rose to prominence in the 1980s while frequently hosting games involving independents, including the 1987 Fiesta Bowl, which served as the de facto national championship game for that season. From 1968 to 1992, the number one and number two ranked teams in the AP poll met only eight times in a bowl game, frequently leading to situations in which multiple teams claimed the national championship. Seeking a more definitive way to determine the national champion, the SEC, Big 8, SWC (prior to its dissolution), ACC, Big East, and independent Notre Dame joined with several bowls to form the Bowl Coalition, which was later succeeded by the similar Bowl Alliance. The Big Ten and Pac-10 declined to join either group in favor of continuing to send their respective champion to the Rose Bowl, contributing to split national championships during some seasons in the 1990s.

Under the BCS system
In 1998, the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) was created by the Big 10, Pac-12, and the former members of the Bowl Alliance. The Rose Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, the Orange Bowl, and the Fiesta Bowl all took part in the system, with a national championship game either rotating among the four bowl sites (prior to the 2006 season) or played as a separate game. The BCS succeeded in bringing an end to split national championships, except in the 2003 season, when LSU won the national championship game and was crowned national champion by the Coaches Poll, but USC was selected as the national champion by the AP poll. While the number of AQ conferences was technically variable, the BCS always had six AQ conferences for its entire history between 1998 and 2013. Following the departure of several Big East members to the ACC, the non-football schools of the Big East known as the "Catholic 7" chose to withdraw from the conference, ultimately creating a new conference that took on the Big East name. The rump Big East renamed itself as the American Athletic Conference (The American or the AAC) and took the Big East's automatic bid for the 2013 season. The Mountain West Conference (MW), formed in 1998 by several former WAC members, was perhaps the closest of the other conferences to getting AQ status, but its request for AQ status was denied in 2012.

In addition to creating a national championship game, the BCS also created a set format for other major bowls. After the two top teams in the BCS rankings were matched up in the BCS National Championship Game, the other three or (after the 2005 season) four bowls selected other top teams. The BCS ranking formula used a combination of polls and computer selection methods to determine team rankings, though conference championships also affected game selection. The term "BCS conference" was used by many fans to refer to one of the six conferences whose champions received an automatic berth in one of the five BCS bowl games, although the BCS itself used the term "automatic qualifying conference" (AQ conference). Each of the bowls had a historical link with one or more of the six BCS conferences with the exception of the former Big East, and the bowl games selected a team from each of these conferences if it was eligible for a BCS bowl and not playing in the national title game. Notre Dame remained an independent in football, but had guaranteed access to the BCS bowls when it met certain defined performance criteria. The conferences automatic qualifying conferences and their traditional bowl links were:


 * Big East Conference (The American in 2013) (not tied to any specific BCS bowl)
 * Atlantic Coast Conference (Orange Bowl)
 * Big 12 Conference (Fiesta Bowl)
 * Big Ten Conference (Rose Bowl)
 * Pac-12 Conference (Rose Bowl)
 * Southeastern Conference (Sugar Bowl)

The other conferences (listed below) were non-AQ conferences because they did not receive an annual automatic bid to a BCS bowl game. The highest ranked champion of any non-AQ conference received an AQ bid if they ranked in the top 12 of the final BCS poll or ranked in the top 16 and higher than a champion of an AQ conference. The conferences in this group were:
 * Big West Conference (BWC) – stopped sponsoring football after the 2000 season.
 * Conference USA (C-USA)
 * Mid-American Conference (MAC)
 * Mountain West Conference (MW)
 * Sun Belt Conference (SBC) – began sponsoring football in 2001.
 * Western Athletic Conference (WAC) – dropped football after the 2012 season.

Under the four-team College Football Playoff system
The BCS faced several controversies throughout its tenure, driven largely by teams and fans dissatisfied at being left out of the championship game. The presence of two SEC teams in the 2012 BCS National Championship Game brought the opposition to the BCS to a head, and helped spur the adoption of the College Football Playoff beginning with the 2014 season. The four-team College Football Playoff took place after the conference championship games and contemporaneously with several other bowl games. It rotated among six bowl games, with two bowl games used each year as the national semi-finals, and four other bowls matching the remaining top teams in the country. These six bowl games were collectively labeled as the "New Year's Six" bowl games, and each conference champion from the Power Five and the highest-ranked Group of Five conference champion were guaranteed a spot in a New Year's Six Bowl. Because there were four spots in the playoffs and five power conferences, at least Power Five champion was always left out of the playoff. In some seasons only two or three P5 champions were selected to the playoff, though the 2023 Florida State Seminoles were the lone undefeated P5 champion to be left out of the playoff.

The new playoff system drew strong television ratings, helping to boost the profile of college football and specifically to the Power Five conferences, who constituted all but one of the CFP participants in the four-team era, and the remaining FBS programs. The CFP also led to changes in stature among the Power Five, and the Pac-12's failure to place a team in the CFP for seven years contributed to the planned exodus of most of its programs following the 2023 season. Bowl games declined in prestige as more focus went to the playoff, and even the New Year's Six bowls frequently saw top players opt out. Like the BCS, the new system endured a series of controversies related to teams being left out of the championship process, both among the Power Five and the Group of Five, leading many to call for a playoff. The 2021 Cincinnati Bearcats were the only Group of Five team to ever play in the College Football Playoff prior to the playoff's planned expansion to twelve teams following the 2023 season; the Bearcats were defeated in the semi-final 2021 Cotton Bowl Classic. Another Group of Five team, the 2017 UCF Knights, was left out of the CFP, but proclaimed themselves the national champion after going undefeated in the regular season and winning the 2018 Peach Bowl. In 2022, the College Football playoff board voted to expand the playoff to twelve teams, with the new system set to take effect for the 2024 season.