The Pacific-10 Conference (Pac-10) is a college athletic conference which operates in the western Unite States. It participates in the NCAA's Division I; its football teams compete in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS; formerly Division I-A), the higher of two levels of NCAA Division I football competition. The conference's ten members compete in 22 NCAA sports. It was founded as the Athletic Association of Western Universities or AAWU in 1959, and went by the names Big Five, Big Six, and Pacific 8 before becoming the Pacific 10 in 1978.