Summit League | |
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Established | June 18, 1982 |
Association | NCAA |
Division | Division I non-football |
Members | 8 full (4 associates) |
Sports fielded | 19 (men's: 9; women's: 10) |
Region | |
Former names | Association of Mid-Continent Universities (1982–1989) Mid-Continent Conference (1989–2007) |
Headquarters | Elmhurst, Illinois |
Commissioner | Tom Douple (since 2005) |
Website | thesummitleague |
Locations | |
The Summit League, or The Summit, is an NCAA Division I intercollegiate athletic conference with its membership mostly located in the Midwestern United States from Indiana and Illinois on the East of the Mississippi River to the Dakotas and Nebraska on the West, with additional members in the Western state of Colorado and the Southern state of Oklahoma. Originally dubbed the Association of Mid-Continent Universities in 1982, on June 1, 2007, the conference changed its name from the Mid-Continent Conference. League headquarters are in Elmhurst, Illinois.
On July 1, 2017, IUPUI left the conference to join the Horizon League leaving the conference with only eight members. The University of North Dakota will join the league in 2018; it will be the 31st school to hold membership in the conference. Of the eight charter members, only Western Illinois University remains a full member.
The Summit League has 22 former members.
The association was created on June 18, 1982 at the O'Hare Hilton Hotel in Chicago, Illinois as the Association of Mid-Continent Universities (or AMCU or AMCU-8, pronounced Am-cue), which it was known as until 1989. The conference sponsored football from 1982 until 1984 at the Division I-AA level (now Division I FCS), and current members North Dakota State, South Dakota, South Dakota State, and Western Illinois plus future member North Dakota have FCS football programs.