National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)

National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) . The NCAA, the major organization controlling college sports for men and women, was created after the turbulent and brutal 1905 college football season. The death of a Union College player in a game with New York University (NYU) aroused Henry MacCracken, chancellor of NYU, to call for a national conference to reform football rules. With the backing of President Theodore Roosevelt, a series of meetings was held and new football rules written, including the introduction of the forward pass. Palmer Pierce of the United States Military Academy was elected the NCAA's first president. Except for writing game rules, the NCAA initially was a debating society; it had the power of moral suasion but lacked legislative and enforcement powers. These were left to individual institutions and conferences. The association did, however, sponsor national tournaments, first in track and field in 1921.

Shortly after World War II, the NCAA hired its first executive director, Walter Byers, and began enacting enforceable legislation. The NCAA passed a major piece of legislation in 1951 to control football telecasts to prevent the loss of gate receipts. By the 1970s, nearly all NCAA income came from a percentage of football telecast fees and from its sponsorship of an annual college basketball tournament, which began in 1939. With revenue from television, the NCAA effectively battled the Amateur Athletic Union for power over amateur athletics, including women's athletics. When the NCAA offered to fund college championships in women's sports in the early 1980s, the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (founded in 1971) went out of existence.
See also Education: Collegiate Education; Education: The Rise of the University; Sports: Amateur Sports and Recreation.

Bibliography

Jack Falla , NCAA: The Voice of College Sports, 1981.
Ronald A. Smith , Sports and Freedom: The Rise of Big‐time College Athletics, 1988.

Ronald A. Smith