National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)

The National Collegiate Athletic Association, commonly known as the NCAA, is a nonprofit organization located in Indianapolis, Indiana, in the United States, that was founded to regulate college athletics and represent student athletes. Member representatives are part of several committees that rule on policy and procedure regarding various aspects of the student-athlete's recruitment, eligibility, and sports participation. The NCAA comprises over one thousand colleges and universities that host approximately nineteen thousand teams competing in twenty-four different sports. Its almost five hundred thousand athletes are divided into three divisions that align like-minded schools and increase competition. In Divisions I and II, academic eligibility to be counted as a student-athlete is determined by the NCAA. The academic eligibility to play for a Division III school is set by the school itself. Competitions for ninety championships exist; the national championships of Division I football and basketball are among the most widely watched and followed in American sports.

Brief History

In 1906, the Intercollegiate Athletic Association, the forerunner of the NCAA, was formed with sixty-two original members. It was a response to many detrimental issues that were plaguing collegiate sports, chief among them death and serious injury of college football players. In 1905, over eighteen fatalities and one hundred major injuries were recorded in college football. As a result, President Theodore Roosevelt convened a meeting at the White House to determine the exact rules of the sport and the means with which to enforce them. Another challenge facing collegiate sports at the end of the nineteenth century was rampant cheating. Due to the high level of competition and each team's desire to be victorious, the players would invite athletes who were not enrolled at the university to help them win. The importance of college athletics had grown so dramatically that it became hard to tell what the university's real purpose was: to tender a winning team, or to educate the nation’s youth. President Walker of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology stated in regard to college athletics, "If the movement shall continue at the same rate, it will soon be fairly a question whether the letters B.A. stands more for Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Athletics."

In 1910, the Intercollegiate Athletic Association became known as the NCAA. The first championship under the jurisdiction of the NCAA was a track and field event in 1921. The NCAA started to record and compile statistics of football, basketball, and baseball and even printed rule books for several sports to maintain conformity in college sports. In 1973, the NCAA decided to divide the participating university teams into three separate divisions to align schools of similar thought and philosophy and create parity among the competition. Division I is generally made up of large schools with plentiful resources, where full scholarships are available for student athletes. In Division II, athletes may receive partial aid to pay for their schooling. Division III has no available scholarships and cannot aid their student athletes based on athletic performance. Over the years, Division III has had the highest graduation rate among athletes.

Overview

The NCAA’s self-proclaimed mission statement maintains that it is "a member-led organization dedicated to the well-being and lifelong success of college athletes." Over the years, the NCAA has expressed that members of the NCAA should believe in and abide by certain core values. Among them has been that school athletics must remain merely an avocation (hobby) and that athletes must maintain a balance between academic excellence, their social experiences, and sport. Eligibility to compete in intercollegiate athletics is only possible for students who have graduated from high school and maintain a 2.3 grade point average in those core courses determined by NCAA board members.

Over the years, the NCAA has become a highly profitable endeavor, with estimated earnings totaling over $1 billion until the 2019–20 season, which saw a drastic decrease in revenue due to cancellations of major events like March Madness to protect player and public safety during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic declared in early 2020. Most of the revenue is from selling television and marketing rights; the biggest money-maker is March Madness, college basketball's annual championship tournament.

One of the major debates that has been discussed extensively is that of amateurism. Whereas professional athletes have always profited from their participation in athletics, for college athletes to receive remuneration of any kind (aside from academic aid) has traditionally been against the rules. This includes prize money or accepting a gift or even a loan to attend a specific university. An athlete who did not abide by these rules would effect an immediate disqualification.

In July 2009, former UCLA basketball star Ed O'Bannon and nineteen others sued the NCAA for breaching antitrust laws by not reimbursing the players after having used their images and likeness for lucrative purposes, such as live television broadcasts and video games. The plaintiffs charged that the NCAA does not have the right to profit from them indefinitely; rather, that their amateur status must exist only while attending school. They claimed that to be paid money that had been put in escrow to be collected after having left the university would not alter their amateur status nor conflict with the NCAA's rules of amateurism. The NCAA countered that even though they had profited at close to a billion dollars a year from using the likenesses of the players, they were in no way exploiting them unfairly, as most of the profits are returned to the schools to be used for players' scholarships and money for everyday expenses. In 2014, Judge Claudia Wilken in US district court in Oakland, California, ruled that the NCAA must relax the restrictions on existing scholarships by offering full academic aid where previously unobtainable; by covering more cost-of-living expenses; and by putting away up to five thousand dollars for each athlete to be used after that individual leaves school. The NCAA, led by President Mike Emmert, said it would appeal the ruling—even to the Supreme Court, if need be. The following year, a federal appeals court ruling supported Wilken's view of the NCAA's violation of antitrust laws but struck down the five-thousand-dollar-payment suggestion.

By 2019, the debate had only increased, particularly as legislators at both state and federal levels introduced bills aimed at challenging the policy and allowing NCAA players to receive financial compensation for the use of their name, image, and likeness. California, one of an eventual several states to introduce this type of law, became the first to pass this type of bill that year. Because of such widespread state legislative moves, by October the NCAA's governing board had voted to change the association's stance and permit its athletes to receive compensation for the use of their name, image, and likeness, and in 2020 Emmert began appealing to Congress to establish a universal federal law that would set up a more standardized system for compliance than individual state laws. Legislators in the House of Representatives and the Senate continued to introduce bills related to college athletes and pay (from name, image, and likeness use to endorsements) as well as the NCAA's overall rules into 2021. That same year, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court's decision that the NCAA's limits on college students' reception of education-related benefits went against antitrust law. By early July, the NCAA had announced that NCAA athletes could profit off of their name, image, and likeness according to state laws where applicable or individual athletes in accordance with NCAA rules until further changes were made at the national or association level.

A settlement agreement, designed to avoid further legal proceedings related to several antitrust lawsuits, reached by the NCAA in May 2024 drew heightened attention as its terms included a significant policy change. In addition to a commitment to pay thousands of current and former athletes approximately $2.8 billion in damages, the settlement included a plan for a revenue-sharing model that would permit its colleges to pay athletes directly for the first time. At the same time, commentators noted that the NCAA, under the new leadership of Charlie Baker since 2023, continued to oppose the concept of players being considered employees of their respective colleges.

Headquarters of the NCAA in Indianapolis includes the NCAA Hall of Champions, a museum dedicated to memorializing collegiate athletic success.

Bibliography

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Murphy, Dan. "Everything You Need to Know about the NCAA's NIL Debate." ESPN, 14 July 2021, www.espn.com/college-sports/story/‗/id/31086019/everything-need-know-ncaa-nil-debate. Accessed 5 Aug. 2021.

"NCAA President Mark Emmert Given 3 Year Extension Through 2020." ESPN.com. ESPN, 1 Feb. 2016.

"Overview." NCAA, www.ncaa.org/sports/2021/2/16/overview.aspx. Accessed 31 May 2024.

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