The establishment of the CFP followed a tumultuous period of conference realignment in Division I. The WAC, after seeing all but two of its football members leave, dropped football after the 2012 season. The Big East split into two leagues in 2013; the schools that did not play FBS football reorganized as a new non-football Big East Conference, while the FBS member schools that remained in the original structure joined with several new members and became the American Athletic Conference. The American retained the Big East's automatic BCS bowl bid for the 2013 season, but lost this status in the CFP era.