The Big 12 Conference is a college athletic conference of ten schools located in the Central United States, with its headquarters located in Las Colinas, a community in the Dallas, Texas suburb of Irving. It is a member of the NCAA's Division I for all sports; 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. Member schools are located in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas, with a future member in West Virginia.

According to the Big 12 Conference's website, the alternate names "Big Twelve" and "Big XII" are incorrect. The trademarked name of the conference is Big 12 Conference, notwithstanding the Roman numeral XII featured on the conference logo.

The conference was officially formed on February 25, 1994, when four schools in Texas from the Southwest Conference joined the Big Eight Conference. Three months later, the schools decided to name the newly formed conference the Big 12 Conference. Athletic competition in the conference commenced on August 31, 1996. Although at the time of its formation the Big 12 was composed of the old Big Eight plus the four Texas schools, it regards itself as a separate conference, not an enlarged Big Eight, and it does not claim the Big Eight's history as its own. However, several college sports history sources consider both conferences as a single continuous operation dating to 1907.

Seth Davis is a writer for Sports Illustrated magazine and an in-studio analyst for CBS' NCAA men's college basketball coverage with Greg Anthony and host Greg Gumbel.

Davis attended Duke University, graduating in 1992 with a degree in political science. He was host of a sports related cable television show on Cable 13, and was also a sports columnist for the university's daily campus newspaper, The Chronicle.

Davis began writing at Sports Illustrated in July 1995. He is currently a staff writer for SI and authors the Inside College Basketball column during the college basketball season. Before joining Sports Illustrated, Davis spent several years at The New Haven Register, where he wrote about various sports, including the NFL, NBA, college basketball and local high school sports.

In 2003, his book Equinunk, Tell Your Story: My Return to Summer Camp about his experiences as a camp counselor, was published. His second book When March Went Mad, was published in 2009.

Davis was born in Connecticut and raised in Potomac, Maryland.