The SEC is a powerhouse conference with 16 teams and a rich Southern football tradition

The Big Ten is the oldest Division I collegiate athletic conference in the US

Established in 1896 with seven members, the Big Ten has expanded far beyond its Midwestern roots. As of 2024, it includes 18 schools—stretching coast to coast from Rutgers in New Jersey to UCLA in California.

11 states formed the Confederacy, with 2 others claiming allegiance

Between December 1860 and June 1861, 11 Southern states officially seceded to form the Confederacy. Pro-Confederate factions in Missouri and Kentucky also declared secession, but both states remained largely under Union control throughout the war.

The College Football Playoff included four teams each year from its inception in 2014 to 2023

Replacing the BCS, the four-team College Football Playoff matched semifinal winners for the national title—delivering dramatic upsets, dynastic runs, and some of the sport’s most memorable games over its first decade.

Why the SEC was started

The Securities and Exchange Commission was created during the Great Depression to restore public trust in financial markets after the 1929 crash. Established in 1934, it enforces transparency, investigates fraud, and protects investors by requiring companies to disclose accurate information and holding violators accountable.

College football is deeply rooted in tradition on and off the field

From marching bands and fight songs to rivalries and pregame rituals, college football’s pageantry binds generations of fans—making tradition as much a part of the sport’s identity as the games themselves.

The FCS is Division I’s second tier with its own playoff system

The Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) features 128 Division I programs that offer fewer scholarships than the FBS. Instead of bowl games, the FCS crowns its champion through a 24-team playoff each season.

The Alabama–Auburn rivalry, known as the Iron Bowl, began in 1893

First played in Birmingham in 1893, the Iron Bowl has become one of college football’s most heated rivalries, with bragging rights, SEC championships, and national title implications fueling decades of fierce competition.

Rivalry between the AFL and NFL led to a merger—and the creation of the Super Bowl

Competition between the American Football League and the National Football League led to a 1966 merger agreement, with the Super Bowl created as a championship game to determine league supremacy before the two leagues were fully integrated.

Florida Gulf Coast became the first 15-seed ever to reach the Sweet 16 with one of March Madness's most electrifying runs

In only their second year of full NCAA eligibility, FGCU upset 2-seed Georgetown and 7-seed San Diego State with flashy alley-oops and fast-break dunks-(earning the nickname "dunk city") becoming the first 15-seed in history to reach the Sweet 16.

The NBA consists of 30 teams and 450 players

The teams are divided into two conferences, the Eastern and Western, each playing 82 games from mid-October to mid-April. Conference champions meet in the NBA Finals each year in late May or June to crown a league champion.

A hoops expert on the likely March Madness expansion

Rumors about March Madness expanding to a field of 76 teams have led to consternation among some college basketball fans, who believe overcrowding the tournament will dilute what makes it great. HoopsHQ's Seth Davis argues it's a good idea, comparing the change to college football's recent (and highly successful) playoff system.

The South built its wealth largely from slave labor

Before the Civil War, the Southern economy relied on roughly 4 million enslaved people producing cash crops such as cotton, rice, and sugarcane. Their forced labor generated immense profits—the South produced 75% of the world's cotton by 1860.

Ranking the highest college football coach salaries

See the pay received by notable college football coaches in the US. Topping the list is Georgia’s Kirby Smart, with a total pay of over $13M. Smart is followed by Clemson’s Dabo Swinney, Texas’ Steve Sarkisian, and USC’s Lincoln Riley. Scroll through the list of 134 names with the lowest displayed salary of $376,000.

How Indiana went from all-time loser to a perfect championship seasonason

The Indiana Hoosiers at one point in history had the most losses of any college football team going back to the 19th century. In January 2026, the team flipped the script by winning the college football championship over Miami and erasing its losing past for good. Read the history here.

The Arab League has 22 members and very little enforcement power

It was founded in Cairo in 1945 and spans 22 nations across the Middle East and North Africa, ostensibly to coordinate policy on economics, culture, and defense. Its charter says any resolution only binds states that voted for them, rendering most of them toothless.

How Standard Oil created Chevron and ExxonMobil

Standard Oil was eventually ordered to separate into 34 different entities, and over the following years, those 34 companies merged into what is now called the “Big Four” in the oil industry.

The Electoral College was shaped in part to balance North–South power

This article examines how the Electoral College emerged from political compromise, including efforts to placate slave-owning Southern states and concerns that Northern states would dominate a direct national presidential vote.

Watch legendary Tennessee coach Pat Summitt talk to her team at halftime

Pat Summitt won eight NCAA titles at Tennessee, with every eligible player graduating under her watch. This behind-the-scenes look from the halftime of the 2007 Final Four shows how she made that happen: She was confident, calm, and communal, even concluding her halftime speech by asking her players what they'd noticed on the court.

Outkast's debut album established southern rap in the mainstream

1994's "Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik" realigned the geography of hip-hop, legitimizing southern rap on the national scene. Up to that point, the prevailing narrative was that the only rap that mattered was found on the East Coast or West Coast, but Outkast forced critics to pay attention to their eclectic southern-tinged style, changing the course of the genre for decades.

How the peach became Georgia's fruit, though it makes fewer than other states

After the Civil War, the state sought to redefine its agricultural traditions away from slave-dependent cotton. One innovator, Samuel Rumph, crossed two breeds of peach, resulting in the Elberta, which could travel farther without spoiling. The state embraced this delicious identity to transcend its earlier reputation.

How Ivy Leagues are worth billions

Ivy League universities manage massive endowments to support their operations—but instead of simply spending donations, they invest them for long-term growth. Yale’s David Swensen helped reshape this approach in the 1980s by diversifying beyond stocks and bonds into private equity, hedge funds, and real estate.

The 300 best fantasy football players ever

Fantasy leagues (and their corresponding group chats) are no strangers to arguments, and this list will likely inspire a few spirited ones. Ten ESPN writers were asked to pick 30 of the undisputed greats of fantasy football, making for a fascinating look back at the all-stars of the digital gridiron

The United States is one of only around two dozen countries with a fully federal system of government, in which power is divided between national and state governments.

Studies show correlations between women's sports and leadership roles

A 2024 Women’s Sports Foundation report showed 69% of women who played sports held leadership roles. Similarly, a 2015 study showed 94% of women in C-suite roles had been involved with athletics.

16 credit unions with almost no membership requirements

One of the hallmarks of credit unions is that they tend to be exclusive. For instance, one of the largest credit unions only does business with Boeing employees. However, this roundup introduces 16 credit unions that have practically no membership requirements. Interested customers may need to guarantee $5 minimum deposits and in some cases, make a donation to an affiliated charitable organization.

Discover why Texas runs its own electric grid, separate from the other US interconnections

In 1935, electrical utilities in the Lone Star State opted to rely on the state's own fossil fuel reserves to power an independent electric grid. While this prevented the federal oversight required for the Eastern and Western Interconnections that span multiple states, it also meant Texas's grid was unable to draw sufficient backup power during the winter 2021 power grid failure.

Dozens of S&P 500 stocks, including Coca-Cola and Walmart—known as the dividend aristocrats—have increased dividends every year for 25 years

Learn how to read a prospectus, the juicy document that any company must file with the SEC before going public.

While the first exchange-traded fund (a 'basket' of different assets that can be bought and sold on a stock exchange) in the US only launched in 1993, the global ETF market has grown to more than $10T in the short time since.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps is independent of Iran's regular army and is one of the most powerful and influential military-political organizations in the Middle East.

See how Ebola tore through Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia in 2014-2016.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

44% of Americans say they pray at least once a day—discover how your state's religiosity stacks up against the rest of the country.

Meet the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence—most of whom didn't put pen to paper until August 2, 1776—and see their original signatures.

Louisiana's 'Cancer Alley' is infamous for having some of the highest industrial pollution, toxic air emissions, and cancer risks in the US.

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

The Great Salt Lake's distinct dual coloration results from high-salinity organisms that only live in the northern portion and produce a purple protein.

The US first hosted the World Cup in 1994, a tournament that lives in soccer infamy for its poor planning and the murder of Colombian player Andres Escobar, who'd accidentally scored on his own net.

A small portion of The Winstons' 'Amen, Brother,' an obscure '60s gospel record, is the basis for thousands of hip-hop tracks, making it one of the most sampled records ever that's informally known as 'the Amen break.'

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

See how Budweiser's famous Clydesdales spend their days at Warm Springs Ranch, where roughly 70 to 80 of the beer brand's giant horses can be found at any given time.

Play the role of a student in a game where you try to navigate college and remain debt-free, selecting different income levels, high school experience, race, ethnicity, and more.

Some renewable energy sources may weaken the resiliency of electric grids by removing outage buffers provided by coal- and natural gas-fired plants, which provide the system with more time to find a new power source if a plant goes down.

Sony set the standard for cylinder-shaped batteries when it repurposed manufacturing equipment used to make rolls of magnetic recording tape.

See how each of the more than two million known species relates to each other—and to common ancestors—in this zoomable tree of life.

See photos of Meteora, a mountainous site in central Greece, home to 14th-century monasteries perched atop soaring outcroppings.

Neutron stars, the remains of some massive stars after they explode in a supernova, are the densest directly observable objects in the universe.