The NCAA, a member-led organization, was founded in 1906 to regulate the rules of college sport and protect young athletes.
At the start of the 20th century, mass formations and gang tackling gave football a reputation as a brutal sport. During the 1904 season alone, there were 18 deaths and 159 serious injuries on the field. At the college level, hired players not enrolled in school often filled out rosters. Some colleges and universities halted football on their campuses. The public outcry grew for the sport to be reformed or abolished.
In October 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt, a longtime football fan, called together athletics leaders from some of the top football schools — Harvard, Princeton and Yale — and urged them to clean up the game. As football deaths and injuries continued to mount during the 1905 season, New York University Chancellor Henry M. MacCracken convened a meeting of 13 schools in December to reform football playing rules. Soon after, on Dec. 28 in New York, 62 colleges and universities became charter members of the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States, the precursor to the NCAA.
The IAAUS officially was constituted as a rules-making body March 31, 1906, and in 1910 was renamed the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Just over a decade later, the Association expanded its focus to host its first national championship: the National Collegiate Track and Field Championships in 1921. Many others followed, including a basketball championship in 1939.
Growth
After World War II, the NCAA adopted the “Sanity Code,” principles that covered financial aid, recruitment and academic standards and were intended to ensure amateurism in college sports. Abuses continued, however, and both the membership and championships were growing. It became clear the Association needed full-time professional leadership.
In 1951, Walter Byers was named executive director, a role he would hold for 36 years. Byers established the Association’s national office in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1952 and quickly went to work. Under his leadership, a program to control live televising of football games was approved, and the NCAA established a system to investigate violations and enforce penalties.
As college athletics grew, bigger schools invested more in their sports programs, while smaller-budget schools struggled to keep pace. In 1973, the Association’s membership was divided into Divisions I, II and III, with each division having legislative powers and separate championships. Five years later, Division I members voted to create subdivisions I-A and I-AA (renamed the Football Bowl Subdivision and the Football Championship Subdivision in 2007) in football.
Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in education, led to an expansion of women’s athletics programs at colleges and universities around the country in the 1970s. At the 1980 Convention, Divisions II and III established 10 championships for women. A year later, the Association adopted a governance plan to include women’s athletics within the NCAA structure and added 19 women’s championships, including Division I and National Collegiate events. In November 1981, the first women’s teams were crowned NCAA champions, ushering in a new era for women’s sports.
On the heels of a number of high-profile enforcement cases, many involving football and basketball, the Association in 1983 adopted Convention Proposal No. 48, which strengthened academic requirements for prospective student-athletes. During this same period, college and university presidents became more involved in the governance of the Association. In 1984, the NCAA established the Presidents Commission, a group of presidents from the three divisions charged with setting an agenda for the Association.
After Walter Byers retired Oct. 1, 1987, University of Virginia Athletics Director Richard D. Schultz took the helm of the NCAA for six years. Schultz was succeeded by University of Arizona Athletics Director Cedric Dempsey in 1994. Dempsey, who led the NCAA until December 2002, oversaw a landmark restructuring of NCAA governance that provided greater autonomy for the three divisions and placed institutional presidents in charge of each division and of the Association in general. Dempsey also led the national office move to Indianapolis in 1999.
In January 2003, Myles Brand left his post at Indiana to become the first university president to serve as the Association’s chief executive. Under Brand, major academic reforms were accomplished in Divisions I and II, and presidential involvement in governance became increasingly effective. Brand also oversaw efforts at fiscal reform and championed diversity and inclusion measures. He died of cancer Sept. 16, 2009.
A new century for the Association
Mark A. Emmert, president at the University of Washington, took over as NCAA president Oct. 5, 2010. As it has forged ahead into its second century, the NCAA has continued its work focused on three guiding principles: academic success, student-athlete well-being and fairness.
The NCAA Sport Science Institute was created in 2013 to spearhead health and safety efforts, and the Association partnered with the Department of Defense in 2014 on the most comprehensive study conducted in the history of concussion research, work that continues and is expanding understanding of how to prevent mild traumatic brain injuries.
The Association also took a stand against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity after several states passed laws that permitted such discrimination in accordance with religious beliefs. In 2016, the Board of Governors announced new requirements for championship host cities that expanded protections against discrimination.
The September 2017 announcement of a federal investigation into fraud in college basketball recruiting made it clear the NCAA needed to make significant changes quickly to ensure a fair playing court. The Association established a Commission on College Basketball to identify needed reforms. Based on the commission’s recommendations, the NCAA’s Board of Governors and Division I Board of Directors made sweeping changes to promote integrity in the game of basketball, strengthen accountability and prioritize the interests of student-athletes.
Health and safety took the forefront in March 2020. As the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic became apparent, the NCAA took the unprecedented step of canceling all of its remaining winter and spring championships, including the Division I Men’s and Women’s Basketball Championships days before selections were to be made. Fall championships were canceled or pushed to spring. With extensive COVID-19 testing programs and other precautions in place, championships returned in 2021. To limit exposure, all rounds of the Division I men’s basketball tournament were moved to the Indianapolis area, while the women’s tournament was held entirely in the San Antonio region.
As the NCAA looks ahead, one of its biggest priorities is modernizing rules surrounding student-athletes’ use of their name, image and likeness. In June 2021, governance bodies in all three divisions adopted a uniform interim policy suspending NCAA name, image and likeness rules for all incoming and current student-athletes in all sports. Association leaders pledged to continue to work with Congress to adopt federal legislation to support student-athletes.
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