Metro Conference

The Metropolitan Collegiate Athletic Conference, popularly known as the Metro Conference, was an NCAA Division I athletics conference, so named because all of its charter members were in urban metropolitan areas in, or at least on the fringes of, the Southern United States. The conference never sponsored football, although most of its members throughout its history had Division I-A football programs (from 1983–91, all Metro schools had independent football programs). In 1995 it merged with the Great Midwest Conference to form Conference USA. The merger was driven mainly by football, as several Metro Conference members had been successfully lured to larger conferences that sponsored the sport.

The conference was popularly known as the "Metro 6" during its first season, then as the "Metro 7" during the rest of the 1970s and early 1980s. For most of its existence, it was considered a "major" conference.