Useful Notes / NCAA

The NCAA, or the National Collegiate Athletic Association, is the primary organization for college level athletics in the United States. Founded in 1906 as a result of a plea by President Theodore Roosevelt to reform college football as the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States, the organization now organizes and regulates events, scholarships, and recruiting in a number of sports in the US (as well as Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, BC, Canada) at all levels.

Sports Officially Sanctioned by the NCAA

These sports have official NCAA championship events. The organization divides the academic year into three distinct "seasons"; these sports are organized by the seasons in which championship events are held.^*Due to COVID-19, the NCAA canceled all winter and spring championships in 2020 (except for those already completed), canceled some winter 2021 championships in Division III due to most D-III members opting out of competition, and moved all of its fall 2020 championship events to spring 2021. The FBS championship, which is not operated by the NCAA, was not moved.

Unless otherwise indicated, all sports have separate championships for men and women, with separate championships for each of the NCAA's divisions (I, II, III—see "Structure" below for the difference).

Fall

• Cross Country
• Field Hockey (women's)
• Football (men's)
  • Note that the top level of college football, Division I FBS, does not have an NCAA-sanctioned championship. The second-level Division I FCS, on the other hand, does have one, as do Divisions II and III (see "Structure" below).
• Soccer
  • The current decade has seen a strong move by the men's soccer community to adopt a "split season" model in which the number of matches would not change, but the season would be split between the fall and spring, with the championship in the spring. Women's soccer is so far not affected by this.
• Volleyball – i.e., indoor volleyball (women's)
  • Indoor volleyball is one of only two NCAA sports in which men and women compete in different seasons. Presumably, this is done to minimize schedule conflicts with basketball. A large majority of NCAA schools hold their volleyball matches in the same venues they use for basketball.
• Water Polo (men's) – single championship for all three divisions
  • This is the other NCAA sport in which men and women compete in different seasons, for much the same reasons as indoor volleyball (in this case, to minimize conflict with swimming & diving).

Winter

• Basketball
• Bowling (women's) – single championship for all three divisions
• Fencing (coeducational – teams have separate men's and women's squads^note (a few only field a women's squad), but all bouts are between members of the same sex) – single team championship for all three divisions
• Gymnastics – single men's and women's championships for all three divisions^note The NCAA sport of "gymnastics" is what is internationally known as artistic gymnastics.
• Ice Hockey – two championships for each sex, with one combined D-I/D-II and the other D-III
• Rifle (coeducational) – single championship for all three divisions. Though a niche sport, it has several aspects of particular note:
  • It's the only NCAA sport in which men and women compete alongside and against one another as equals.
    • As a result, it's also the only NCAA sport in which an all-female team can win a national title while competing against men's (or coed) teams. While fencing and skiing have a single coed team championship, the entry rules of those championships make it impossible for a single-sex team to win a team title.
  • It's also the only NCAA sport in which two teams from the same school can directly compete against one another; schools may field any combination of men-only, women-only, and mixed-sex teams (only one of each type; no NCAA rifle school currently fields more than two teams).
  • Most notably, it's the first NCAA sport to be open to women. While the NCAA didn't sponsor women's sports championships until the 1981–82 school year, the rifle championship has been open to women since its first edition in March 1980.
• Skiing (coeducational – teams have separate men's and women's squads, with all races involving only a single sex) – single team championship for all three divisions
  • The NCAA championships include both Alpine and Nordic skiing, but only a subset of the Olympic events. Specifically, only slalom and giant slalom in Alpine, and individual cross-country races in Nordic.
• Swimming & Diving – The NCAA combines these two Pool Sports into one.
• Indoor Track & Field
• Wrestling (men's)

Spring

• Baseball (men's)
• Beach Volleyball (women) – single championship for all three divisions
• Golf
• Lacrosse
• Rowing (women's)
• Softball (women's)
• Tennis
• Outdoor Track & Field
• Volleyball (men's) – two championships, one combined D-I/D-II and the other D-III
• Water Polo (women's) – single championship for all three divisions

An aside on scholarships in cross country and track: While the NCAA considers cross country, indoor track, and outdoor track to be separate sports, it combines all three for purposes of scholarship limits in Divisions I and II. In other words, schools are limited to a certain number of scholarships for track and cross country combined.^note The NCAA has a separate limit for schools that sponsor neither form of track for a given sex, but do sponsor cross country for that sex.

But Wait, There's More! In addition to these, the NCAA also recognizes certain sports as "emerging sports" for women. Unlike the sports listed above, these do not have NCAA-organized championship events. (They do have championship events run by other bodies.)

• Acrobatics & tumbling – A combination of the internationally recognized gymnastic disciplines of acrobatic gymnastics and tumbling.
• Equestrianism^note called "equestrian" by the NCAA; the NCAA sport does not include all of the equestrian disciplines contested in the Olympics – An "emerging sport" only in Divisions I and II. The Division III membership has voted down two separate attempts to bring its equestrian programs under the NCAA umbrella.
• Rugby
• Stunt – An all-female cheerleading discipline that heavily emphasizes acrobatics. The newest emerging sport, added for Divisions I and II in 2023–24; Division III is considering adding it as well but has not yet done so.
• Triathlon
• Wrestling^note Incidentally, men's and women's college wrestling use separate rulesets. Men's wrestling uses its own ruleset, described by The Other Wiki as collegiate wrestling. NCAA-recognized women's wrestling uses the same freestyle ruleset seen in the Olympics.

Structure

The NCAA membership is organized into three "Divisions" which denote level of play. Most NCAA sports have separate championships for each division, although as noted above some sports have only one championship open to all members, and others have a combined championship for the top two levels and a separate one for the lowest. See the page on the NCAA on The Other Wiki for more details. The basic divisions are:

• Division I — The highest level, with the greatest numbers of scholarships.^note Although some conferences restrict the number of scholarships, especially in football, to a lower level than the NCAA allows. Most notably, the Ivy League does not allow athletic scholarships in any sport. Football is subdivided into FBS (top level) and FCS; see our pages on college football conferences (Power Five; Group of Five, FBS independents, and FCS) or The Other Wiki for more details.
• Division II — Mostly smaller schools that still wish to award athletic scholarships, but in considerably smaller numbers than in Division I.
• Division III — Does not allow athletic scholarships, period^note "full stop" for our friends outside North America... with an exception noted farther down the page. Generally, these schools strongly emphasize academics over athletics, and treat athletics as just another student activity.

The NCAA first split into divisions for both legislative and competitive purposes in 1956, with the most competitive programs placed in the University Division and the rest of the membership placed in the College Division. The current three-division setup, with divisions designated by Roman numerals, was created in 1973. The University Division was renamed Division I; the College Division was split, with schools wishing to continue awarding athletic scholarships (or compete alongside those that did) placed in Division II and those wishing a non-scholarship environment placed in Division III.

Aside from the divisional structure, NCAA teams are, in the vast majority of cases, members of athletic conferences. These conferences often act as member leagues of the NCAA, and usually organize their own meetings and tournaments, as well as their own rules for member schools. While there are a few schools that remain independent, the vast majority of schools join due to the added benefits (scheduling, scholarships, postseason and tournament play) that conferences bring. Additionally, for these reasons it is not uncommon for a school to be a member of a conference for one sport, but a member of a different one for another. This most often happens for one of two reasons, which sometimes overlap:

• A sport has a limited number of schools sponsoring it. For example, ice hockey is highly regionalized, with sponsoring schools almost all being in areas with cold winters. Because of this, the only Division I all-sports conference^note one that sponsors men's and women's basketball—while the NCAA's definition of "all-sports conference" is much more detailed, every conference with basketball meets NCAA criteria for "all-sports" status that sponsors the sport for either sex is the Big Ten, which only runs a men's league.^note Technically, the Ivy League sponsors the sport for both sexes. However, it doesn't hold a postseason tournament. Instead, its six hockey-sponsoring schools, all with men's and women's teams, play as members of ECAC Hockey, and compete for that conference's automatic bids to the NCAA men's and women's tournaments. Ivy champions are extrapolated from regular-season results in ECAC games that involve two Ivy teams. As a result, hockey has its own set of conferences separate from the all-sports structure.
• A school sponsors a sport that its main conference does not. This is not just the case in ice hockey, but in many more widely sponsored NCAA sports. For example, as of the upcoming 2024 NCAA soccer season, five FBS conferences—the Big 12, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, and SEC—sponsor soccer for women but not for men. The schools in these conferences that have men's soccer teams house them in other all-sports conferences that do operate men's soccer leagues.^note In the men's soccer example here, as of the 2024 season, FIU (CUSA) plays in the American Athletic Conference; Akron (MAC) plays in the Big East Conference; Bowling Green, Northern Illinois, and Western Michigan (all MAC) play in the Missouri Valley Conference; Liberty (CUSA) plays in the Ohio Valley Conference; Kentucky, South Carolina (both SEC), UCF, and West Virginia (both Big 12) play in the Sun Belt Conference; and Air Force, San Diego State, San Jose State, and UNLV (all MW) play in the Western Athletic Conference. The Pac-12 has been reduced to two members in 2024, with only Oregon State sponsoring men's soccer; the Beavers will house that sport in the West Coast Conference. There are also a small number of conferences that exist only to serve this need. The largest are the Eastern College Athletic Conference ^note 220 schools across all three divisions in 15 mens and women's sports apiece. The previously noted ECAC Hockey was part of this consortium until 2004, though it retains the initialism (presumably by license). and the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation.^note 38 schools, in 11 Division I sports; in 2024–25 the MPSF will add beach volleyball with six of its seven teams coming from 2023–24 Pac-12, including the two (USC and UCLA) that won the first seven NCAA championships in the sport.

Another structural note involves scholarships. As noted above, the key distinction between Division III and the other divisions is the prohibition of athletic scholarships. Not only that, D-III schools are not allowed to maintain endowments to support athletics, cannot use athletic ability as a criterion to award any form of financial aid, and are routinely monitored by the NCAA to ensure that the proportion of financial aid awarded to varsity athletes is closely proportional to their share of the student body.^note The two D-III service academies, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine, do not violate the scholarship ban because all students receive federally-funded full scholarships whether or not they play on a varsity team.

In the two higher divisions, each school is limited as to the number of scholarships it can award in each of its sports. Division I sports are divided into "head-count" and "equivalency" sports:

• In head-count sports, schools are restricted to a set number of students receiving aid for that sport, but each player may receive up to a full scholarship. Currently, two men's and four women's sports are head-count—basketball and FBS football for men, and basketball, gymnastics, tennis, and (indoor) volleyball for women.
• In equivalency sports, including FCS football, schools are restricted to providing athletic aid in each sport that's equivalent to a set number of full scholarships, with that number set well below the standard squad size for that sport. These "equivalents" may be (and are) split into partial scholarships as each program sees fit. It should be noted that all Division II sports are classified as equivalency sports.

In sports that do not have separate national championships for D-II or D-III, lower-division schools are allowed to compete alongside D-I members. D-II members may operate under D-I rules and scholarship limits in those sports. The sport most notably affected by this rule is ice hockey; the NCAA has never had a D-II women's championship in that sport, and abolished its D-II men's championship in the late '90s. While the NCAA previously allowed D-II schools to compete in D-I in sports other than football and basketball, even if D-II championships were available, it shut off that ability in 2011, though a grandfather clause allows a few D-II schools to "play up" despite the existence of D-II championships to this day.^note As of the 2023–24 school year, the last such schools are Augusta in men's and women's golf; Dallas Baptist in baseball; Francis Marion in men's golf; Bloomsburg, Clarion, and Edinboro in men's wrestling; and Lock Haven in both field hockey and men's wrestling.

Another grandfather clause, dating from 2004, has allowed an even smaller number of D-III schools to compete as D-I members with scholarships in one men's sport and one women's sport. The most notable examples of programs covered by this clause are Johns Hopkins men's lacrosse and Colorado College men's ice hockey.^note The schools covered by this particular grandfather clause had competed at the highest level in a specific sport before the NCAA's first divisional split in 1956, long before women's sports were under NCAA authority. These schools were later allowed to add a scholarship women's team, presumably due to Title IX (i.e., a federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in higher education). This rule changed in 2021, shortly after the NCAA gave each division the right to set its own rules without needing to go through approval by the entire membership. Not only can schools covered by the 2004 grandfather clause still offer scholarships in their D-I sports, but any D-III school that sponsors a sport that does not have a D-III championship can offer scholarships in that sport.