National Collegiate Athletic Association

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is an association of 1,281 institutions, conferences, organizations and individuals that organizes the athletic programs of many colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. It is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana.

In August 1973, the current three-division setup of Division I, Division II, and Division III was adopted by the NCAA membership in a special convention. Under NCAA rules, Division I and Division II schools can offer scholarships to athletes for playing a sport. Division III schools may not offer any athletic scholarships. Generally, larger schools compete in Division I and smaller schools in II and III. Division I football was further divided into I-A and I-AA in 1978. Subsequently the term "Division I-AAA" was briefly added to delineate Division I schools which do not field a football program at all, but that term is no longer officially used by the NCAA. In 2006, Divisions I-A and I-AA were respectively renamed the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) and Football Championship Subdivision (FCS).

History
Inter-collegiate sports in the US began in 1852 when crews from Harvard and Yale met in a challenge race in the sport of rowing. As rowing remained the pre-eminent sport in the country into the late-1800's, many of the initial debates about collegiate athletic eligibility and purpose were settled through organizations like the Rowing Association of American Colleges and the Intercollegiate Rowing Association. As other sports emerged, notably football and basketball, many of these same concepts and standards were adopted. Football, in particular, began to emerge as a marquee sport, but the rules of the game itself were in constant flux and often had to be adapted for each contest.

The NCAA dates its formation to two White House conferences convened by President Theodore Roosevelt to "encourage reforms" to college football practices in the early 20th century, which had resulted in repeated injuries and deaths and "prompted many college and universities to discontinue the sport." Following those White House meetings, Chancellor Henry MacCracken of New York University organized a meeting of 13 colleges and universities to initiate changes; at a follow-on meeting, 62 institutions became charter members of the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (IAAUS). The IAAUS was officially established on March 31, 1906, and took its present name, the NCAA, in 1910.

Until the 1980s, the association did not offer women's athletics. Instead an organization named the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) governed women's collegiate sports in the United States. By 1982, however, all divisions of the NCAA offered national championship events for women's athletics and most members of the AIAW joined the NCAA.

In 2009, Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada became the NCAA's first non-US member institution.

Headquarters
The modern era of the NCAA began in July 1952 when its executive director, Kansas City, Missouri native Walter Byers, moved the organization's headquarters from the LaSalle Hotel in Chicago (where its offices were shared by the headquarters of the Big Ten Conference) to the Fairmount Building at 101 West 11th Street in Downtown Kansas City. The move was intended to separate the NCAA from direct influence of any individual conference and to keep it centrally located.

The Fairmount was a block from Municipal Auditorium which had hosted Final Four games in 1940, 1941 and 1942.

After Byers moved to Kansas City, the championships would be held in Municipal in 1953, 1954, 1955, 1957, 1961, 1964.

The Fairmount office consisted of three rooms with no air conditioning. Byers' staff consisted of four people (an assistant, two secretaries and a bookkeeper).

In 1964 it moved three blocks away to offices in the Midland Theatre.

In 1973 it moved to 6299 Nall at Shawnee Mission Parkway in suburban Mission, Kansas in a $1.2 million building on 3.4 acre.

In 1989 it moved six miles (10 km) further south into the suburbs to 6201 College Boulevard in Overland Park, Kansas. The new building was on 11.35 acre and had 130000 sqft of space.

The NCAA was dissatisfied with its Johnson County, Kansas suburban location noting that its location on the south edges of the Kansas City suburbs was more than 40 minutes from Kansas City International Airport. They also noted that the suburban location was not drawing visitors to its new visitors' centre.

In 1997 it asked for bids for a new headquarters.

Various cities competed for a new headquarters with the two finalists being Kansas City and Indianapolis.

Kansas City proposed to relocate the NCAA back downtown near the Crown Center complex and would locate the visitors' centre in Union Station (Kansas City). However Kansas City's main sports venue Kemper Arena was nearly 30 years old.

Indianapolis argued that it was in fact more central than Kansas City in that two thirds of the members are east of the Mississippi River.

Further the 50,000-seat RCA Dome far eclipsed the 17,000-seat Kemper.

In 1999 the NCAA moved its 300 member staff to its new headquarters in the White River State Park in a four-story, 140000 sqft facility on the west edge of downtown Indianapolis, Indiana. Adjacent to the headquarters is the 35000 sqft NCAA Hall of Champions.

Structure
The NCAA's legislative structure is broken down into cabinets and committees, consisting of various representatives of its member schools. These may be broken down further into sub-committees. Legislation is then passed on, which oversees all the cabinets and committees, and also includes representatives from the schools, such as athletic directors and faculty advisors. Management Council legislation goes on to the Board of Directors, which consists of school presidents, for final approval. The NCAA staff provides support, acting as guides, liaison, research and public and media relations. The NCAA stands for the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

Sports sanctioned by the NCAA include the following: basketball, baseball (men), softball (women), football (men), cross country, field hockey (women), bowling (women), golf, fencing (coeducational), lacrosse, soccer, gymnastics, rowing (women only), volleyball, ice hockey, water polo, rifle (coeducational), tennis, skiing (coeducational), track and field, swimming and diving, and wrestling (men).

Presidents of NCAA
The NCAA had no full-time administrator until 1951, when Walter Byers was appointed executive director. In 1998, the title was changed to President.


 * Walter Byers 1951–1988
 * Dick Schultz 1988–1993
 * Cedric Dempsey 1994–2002
 * Myles Brand 2003–2009
 * Jim Isch (interim) 2009–2010
 * Mark A. Emmert 2010–present

All sports
The NCAA awards championships in in the following sports:

The NCAA has never sanctioned an official championship in the highest level of football, now known as Division I FBS. Instead, several outside bodies award their own titles; see below.

As of December 2011, UCLA, Stanford, and University of Southern California have the most NCAA championships; UCLA holds the most, winning a combined 108 team championships in men's and women's sports, with Stanford second, with 103, University of Southern California third with 95, Abilene Christian with 55, and then Oklahoma State with 50.

During the 2008-09 school year, the Pac-10 conference captured 11 NCAA titles, outperforming any other conference. It was followed by the ACC and Big Ten with five championships, and by the Big 12 and SEC conferences with four each.

The NCAA currently awards 87 national championships yearly; 44 women's, 40 men's, and coed championships for fencing, rifle, and skiing. For every NCAA sanctioned sport other than Division I FBS football, the NCAA awards trophies with gold, silver, and bronze plating for the first, second, and third place teams respectively. In the case of the NCAA basketball tournaments, both semifinalists who did not make the championship game receive bronze plated trophies for third place (prior to 1982 the teams played a "consolation" game to determine third place). Similar trophies are awarded to both semifinalists in the NCAA football tournaments (which are conducted in Division I FCS and both lower divisions), which have never had a third-place game. Winning teams maintain permanent possession of these trophies unless it is later found that they were won via serious rules violations.

Starting with the 2001 season, and again in 2008, the trophies were changed. Starting in the 2007 basketball season, teams that make the Final Four in the Division I tournament receive bronze plated "regional championship" trophies upon winning their Regional Championship. The teams that make the National Championship game receive an additional trophy that is gold plated for the winner and silver plated for the runner-up. Starting in the mid-1990s, the National Champions in men's and women's basketball receive a very elaborate trophy sponsored by Siemens with a black marble base and crystal "neck" with a removable crystal basketball following the presentation of the standard NCAA Championship trophy.

Football Bowl Subdivision
The NCAA does not hold a championship tournament for Division I FBS football. In the past, the "national championship" went to teams that placed first in any of a number of season-ending media polls, most notable the AP Poll of writers and the Coaches Poll. Currently, the Bowl Championship Series&mdash;an association of the conferences and independent schools that compete in Division I FBS and four bowl games&mdash;has arranged to place the top two teams (based on a formula blending human polls and computer rankings) into a national title game. The winner of the BCS title game must be ranked first in the final Coaches' Poll and receives the AFCA Coaches' Trophy (presently sponsored by Dr Pepper); since the NCAA awards no national championship for Division I FBS football, this trophy does not say NCAA as other NCAA college sports national championship trophies do. The AP and other organizations are still free to name as national champions other teams than the one that won the BCS championship, although all conferences (and by extension their teams) are contractually agreed to the BCS formula and champion the USA Today Coaches' poll is required to vote the winner of the “BCS National Championship Game” the #1 team in the nation in the final poll. All conferences have sanctioned this practice and championship (with various changes to the present form seen today) for the several contractual periods since 1998.

Awards

 * See also: Academic All-America, Best Female College Athlete ESPY Award, Best Male College Athlete ESPY Award, Lowe's Senior CLASS Award, Honda Sports Award, College baseball awards, and Sports Illustrated 2009 all-decade honors (college basketball & football)
 * See footnote

The NCAA presents a number of different individual awards, including:
 * NCAA Award of Valor (not given every year); selection is based on heroic action occurring in the academic year.
 * NCAA Gerald R. Ford Award, honoring an individual who has provided significant leadership as an advocate for intercollegiate athletics.
 * NCAA Inspiration Award (not given every year); selection is based on inspirational action.
 * NCAA Sportsmanship Award, honoring student-athletes who have demonstrated one or more of the ideals of sportsmanship.
 * NCAA Theodore Roosevelt Award, the highest honor that the NCAA confers on an individual.
 * NCAA Woman of the Year Award, honoring a senior student-athlete who has distinguished herself throughout her collegiate career in academics, athletics, service and leadership.
 * Elite 89 Award, honoring the student-athlete with the highest cumulative GPA who has reached the competition at the finals site for each of the NCAA's 89 men's and women's championships (in Divisions I, II, and III).
 * Silver Anniversary Awards, honoring six distinguished former student-athletes on the 25th anniversary of their college graduation.
 * The Flying Wedge Award, one of the NCAA’s highest honors exemplifying outstanding leadership and service to the NCAA.
 * Today's Top VIII Award, honoring eight outstanding senior student-athletes.
 * Walter Byers Scholarship, honoring the top male and female scholar-athletes.

In previous years, the NCAA has presented the following awards at its NCAA Honors event: Astronaut Salute, Business Leader Salute, Congressional Medal of Honor Salute, Governor Salute, Olympians Salute, Performing Arts Salute, Presidents Cabinet Salute, Prominent National Media Salute, Special Recognition Awards, U.S. House of Representatives Salute, U.S. Senate Salute.

Conferences

 * See also: List of NCAA conferences and List of non-NCAA conferences

Division I conferences

 * Note: Conferences with automatic entry to the Bowl Championship Series are denoted with an asterisk (*).
 * Note: Conferences within the Football Bowl Subdivision but not the BCS are denoted with a pound sign (#).


 * America East Conference
 * Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC)*
 * Atlantic Sun Conference
 * Atlantic 10 Conference (A-10)
 * Big East Conference*
 * Big Sky Conference
 * Big South Conference
 * Big Ten Conference (Big Ten) *
 * Big 12 Conference (Big 12) *
 * Big West Conference
 * Colonial Athletic Association (CAA)
 * Conference USA (C-USA) #
 * Great West Conference
 * Horizon League
 * NCAA Independents
 * Ivy League
 * Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC)


 * Mid-American Conference (MAC) #
 * Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC)
 * Missouri Valley Conference (MVC or The Valley)
 * Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF)
 * Mountain West Conference (MWC) #
 * Northeast Conference (NEC)
 * Ohio Valley Conference (OVC)
 * Pacific-12 Conference (Pac-12)*
 * Patriot League
 * Southeastern Conference (SEC)*
 * Southern Conference (SoCon)
 * Southland Conference
 * Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC)
 * The Summit League (The Summit)
 * Sun Belt Conference (SBC) #
 * West Coast Conference (WCC)
 * Western Athletic Conference (WAC) #

Division I FCS football-only conferences

 * Missouri Valley Football Conference
 * Pioneer Football League

Division I hockey-only conferences

 * Atlantic Hockey
 * Central Collegiate Hockey Association (CCHA)
 * College Hockey America
 * ECAC Hockey
 * Hockey East
 * National Collegiate Hockey Conference (NCHC)
 * Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA)

Division II conferences

 * See: List of NCAA conferences

Division III conferences

 * See: List of NCAA conferences

Media
The NCAA has current media rights contracts with CBS Sports, CBS College Sports Network, ESPN, ESPN Plus, and Turner Sports for coverage of its 88 championships. According to the official NCAA website, ESPN and its associated networks have rights to 21 championships, CBS to 67, and Turner Sports to one. The following are the most prominent championships and rightsholders:
 * CBS: Men's basketball (NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament, with Turner Sports, and NCAA Men's Division II Basketball Tournament), track and field, ice hockey (women's division I)
 * ESPN: Women's basketball (all divisions), baseball, softball, ice hockey (men's division I), football (all divisions including Div. I FCS), soccer (division I for both sexes)
 * Turner Sports: NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament with CBS

Westwood One has exclusive radio rights to the men's and women's basketball Final Fours to the men's College World Series (baseball). DirecTV has an exclusive package expanding CBS' coverage of the men's basketball tournament.

Video games based on popular NCAA sports such as football and basketball are licensed by Electronic Arts.

Football television controversy
In the late 1940s there were only two colleges in the country with a national TV contract, a considerable source of revenue. In 1951, the NCAA voted to prohibit any live TV broadcast of college football games during the season. No sooner had the NCAA voted to ban television than public outcry forced it to retreat. Instead, the NCAA voted to restrict the number of televised games for each team to stop the slide in gate attendance. Harold Stassen, president of the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), defied the monopoly and signed a $200,000 contract with ABC. Eventually, Penn was forced to back down when the NCAA threatened to expel the Quakers from the association.

By the 1980s, televised college football had become a much larger source of income for the NCAA. If the television contracts the NCAA had with ABC, CBS, and ESPN had remained in effect for the 1984 season, they would have generated US$73.6 million for the Association and its members. In September 1981, the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma and the University of Georgia Athletic Association filed suit against the NCAA in district court in Oklahoma. The plaintiffs stated that the NCAA's football television plan constituted price fixing, output restraints, boycott, and monopolizing, all of which were illegal under the Sherman Act. The NCAA argued that its pro-competitive and non-commercial justifications for the plan—-protection of live gate, maintenance of competitive balance among NCAA member institutions and creation of a more attractive "product" to compete with other forms of entertainment—-combined to make the plan reasonable.

In September 1982, the district court found in favor of the plaintiffs, ruling that the plan violated antitrust laws. It enjoined the Association from enforcing the contract. The NCAA appealed all the way to the United States Supreme Court, but lost in 1984 in the 7-2 ruling NCAA v. Board of Regents of Univ. of Oklahoma.

Eligibility
To participate in college athletics in the freshmen year the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) states that students must meet three requirements; graduate from high school, complete the minimum required academic courses, and have qualifying grade-point average (GPA) and SAT or ACT scores.

The 16 academic credits are four courses in English, two courses in math, two classes in social science, two in natural or physical science, and one additional course in English, math, natural or physical science, or another academic course such as foreign language.

To meet the requirements for grade point average and SAT scores students the lowest possible GPA a student may be eligible with is a 1.700 with an SAT score of 1400. The lowest SAT score a student may be eligible with is 700 with a GPA of 2.500.

As of 2011, a high school student may sign a letter of intent to enter and play football for a college only after the first Wednesday in February. In August 2011, the NCAA announced plans to raise academic requirements for postseason competition, including its two most prominent competitions, football's Bowl Championship Series and the Men's Division I Basketball Championship; the new requirement, which are based on an "academic progress rate" that measures retention and graduation rates, and is calculated on a four-year, rolling basis. The changes raise the rate from 900 to 930, which represents a 50% graduation rate.

Rules violations
Member schools pledge to follow the rules promulgated by the NCAA. Creation of a mechanism to enforce the NCAA's legislation occurred in 1952 after careful consideration by the membership.

Allegations of rules violations are referred to the NCAA's investigative staff. A preliminary investigation is initiated to determine if an official inquiry is warranted and to categorize any resultant violations as secondary or major. If several violations are found, the NCAA may determine that the school as a whole has exhibited a "lack of institutional control." The institution involved is notified promptly and may appear in its own behalf before the NCAA Committee on Infractions.

Findings of the Committee on Infractions and the resultant sanctions in major cases are reported to the institution. Sanctions will generally include having the institution placed on "probation" for a period of time, in addition to other penalties. The institution may appeal the findings or sanctions to an appeals committee. After considering written reports and oral presentations by representatives of the Committee on Infractions and the institution, the committee acts on the appeal. Action may include accepting the infractions committee's findings and penalty, altering either, or making its own findings and imposing an appropriate penalty. The current longest running period of sanctions belongs to the University of Alabama (at Tuscaloosa). Sanctions at Alabama cover all major sports and will expire in June 2012 (extending the record for 17 years upon being penalized in 1995).

In cases of particularly egregious misconduct, the NCAA has the power to ban a school from participating in a particular sport, a penalty known as the "Death Penalty". Since 1985, any school that commits major violations during the probationary period can be banned from the sport involved for up to two years. However, when the NCAA opts not to issue a death penalty for a repeat violation, it must explain why it didn't do so. This penalty has only been imposed three times in its modern form, most notably when Southern Methodist University's football team had its 1987 season canceled due to massive rules violations dating back more than a decade. SMU opted not to field a team in 1988 as well due to the aftershocks from the sanctions, and the program has never recovered; it has only two winning seasons and one bowl appearance since then. The devastating effect the death penalty had on SMU has reportedly made the NCAA skittish about issuing another one. Since the SMU case, there are only three instances where the NCAA has seriously considered imposing it against a Division I school; it imposed it against Division II Morehouse College's men's soccer team in 2003 and Division III MacMurray College's men's tennis team in 2005.

Additionally, in particularly egregious cases of rules violations, coaches, athletic directors and athletic support staff can be barred from working for any NCAA member school without permission from the NCAA. This procedure is known as a "show-cause penalty" (not to be confused with an order to show cause in the legal sense). Theoretically, a school can hire someone with a "show cause" on their record during the time the show cause order is in effect only with permission from the NCAA Infractions Committee. The school assumes the risks and stigma of hiring such a person. It may then end up being sanctioned by the NCAA and the Infractions Committee for their choice, possibly losing athletic scholarships, revenue from schools who would not want to compete with that other school, and the ability for their games to be televised, along with restrictions on recruitment and practicing times. As a result, a show-cause order usually has the effect of blackballing individuals from being hired for the duration of the order.

Division I-FBS institutions on probation
The following Division I Football Bowl Subdivision institutions are currently on probation by the NCAA in one or more sports:

Division I-FCS institutions on probation
The following Division I-FCS institutions are currently on probation by the NCAA in one or more sports:

Division I non-football institutions on probation
The following Division I non-football institutions are currently on probation by the NCAA in one or more sports:

Division II institutions on probation
The following Division II institutions are currently on probation by the NCAA in one or more sports:

Division III institutions on probation
The following Division III institutions are currently on probation by the NCAA in one or more sports:

Subsidiaries
The NCAA runs the officiating software company ArbiterSports, based in Sandy, Utah, a joint venture between two subsidiaries of the NCAA, Arbiter LLC and eOfficials LLC. The NCAA has said their objective is for the venture to help improve the fairness, quality and consistency of officiating across amateur athletics.

Sponsors

 * AT&T, Coca-Cola and CapitalOne are NCAA Corporate Champions. Other sponsors are NCAA Corporate Partners.

Criticisms
Numerous criticisms have been lodged against the NCAA. These include:
 * The creators of South Park in the episode "Crack Baby Athletic Association" (s15e05)
 * Several people, notably including former Sports Illustrated columnist Rick Reilly, and NPR's Frank Deford, have criticized the NCAA for its inflexibility.
 * Former NCAA President Walter Byers in his book Unsportsmanlike Conduct: Exploiting College Athletes refers to the NCAA's operation by stating that "Today the NCAA Presidents Commission is preoccupied with tightening a few loose bolts in a worn machine, firmly committed to the neo-plantation belief that the enormous proceeds from college games belong to the overseers (administrators) and supervisors (coaches). The plantation workers performing in the arena may only receive those benefits authorized by the overseers."
 * Following losing the 1953 case The University of Denver v Nemeth, where it was found that a student and athlete was owed workers' compensation, it has been argued that the NCAA created the term "student-athlete". This was done according to Andrew Zimbalist in his book Unpaid Professionals (1999) to prevent similar future litigation losses.
 * In 2007, the case of White et al. v NCAA was brought by former NCAA student-athletes Jason White, Brian Pollack, Jovan Harris and Chris Craig as a class action lawsuit. They argued that the NCAA's current limits on a full scholarship or Grant in Aid was a violation of federal antitrust laws.  Their reasoning was that in the absence of such a limit, NCAA member schools would be free to offer any financial aid packages they desired to recruit the student and athlete.  The NCAA settled before a ruling by the court, by agreeing to set up the Former Student-Athlete Fund to "assist qualified candidates applying for receipt of career development expenses and/or reimbursement of educational expenses under the terms of the agreement with plaintiffs in a federal antitrust lawsuit."  More information about this settlement is available at NCAA
 * The National Collegiate Players Association (NCPA) is a group started by former UCLA football players with the purpose of organizing student-athletes. Their goal is to change NCAA rules they view as unjust. Today, this continues by doing the following:
 * 1) Raising the scholarship amount
 * 2) Holding schools responsible for their players' sports-related medical injuries
 * 3) Increasing graduation rates.

Other collegiate athletic organizations
The NCAA is the dominant, but not the only, collegiate athletic organization in the United States. Several other such organizations exist.

In the United States

 * National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA)
 * National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA)
 * National Christian College Athletic Association (NCCAA)
 * United States Collegiate Athletic Association (USCAA)
 * Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) – disbanded in 1982, after the NCAA began sponsoring championships in women's sports

Foreign intercollegiate/interuniversity equivalents

 * British Universities & Colleges Sport
 * Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS)
 * Canadian Colleges Athletic Association (CCAA)
 * National Collegiate Athletic Association (Philippines) (NCAA) and University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) for Philippines (among other leagues)

International governing body

 * International University Sports Federation (FISU) (Fédération Internationale du Sport Universitaire)