The Birth of the NCAA: How Theodore Roosevelt and Reform Saved College Sports

On March thirty first, nineteen o six, the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States is founded and would later be named the NC Double A. Back when college sports was on the brink of collapsing, football was so brutal that it claimed multiple lives and the future of intercollegiate athletics was in question. It was time for bold action and leadership came to change college athletics and how the United States viewed college athletics. Today, we're going to discover how President Eddie Roosevelt intervened in safe football, creating the first steps for what would now become the NC Double A. And we're going to take that journey to the history of college sports and uncovered the pivotal moments that shape the NC Double A today on Daily Sports History. Welcome to Daily Sports History. I'm Ethan Reese, your guide as you daily learn more about sports history, increasing your sports knowledge as we dive into the history of the NC Double A. So to understand how the NCAA started, we have to go way back to the eighteen hundreds. As before eighteen fifty, college sports was largely informal and just recreational, and there were sports not even invented yet. Football and basketball, to the NCAA's biggest sports today were not invented by this time, and students would play activities and have their own type of games that are now even lost to history. And the first organized sports club was at Yale University in eighteen forty three, followed by Harvard the following year, where they each had a boat club. And these clubs lay the groundwork for sports teams connected to their colleges, and in eighteen fifty two Harvard would face off against Yale in a rowing regatta. This was a historic race on Lake Winnipesaki in New Hampshire, and it marked the birth of intercollegiate sports. Harvard one, sparking a rivalry has become a cornerstone of America in both athletics and beyond now. The race was student organized to attract public attention, which essentially is the same reason we have sports to this day. Then, in eighteen fifty nine was the first intercollegiate baseball game played against Amherst and william College. By eighteen seventy college teams were playing extensive schedules between each other, and by eighteen seventy nine the first intercollegiate baseball league was formed. Now football followed close behind when they played their first intercollegiate football game, which we actually covered on a previous episode where Rutgers took on Princeton in eighteen sixty nine in what we wouldn't call football today. It resembled more soccer with a lot more kicking, but it was the beginning of football. A track and field intercollegiate event first occurred in eighteen seventy three, featuring athletes from Amherst, Cornell and Micguell University. So you can see as the years go on, more and more sports got played at colleges, and we're playing other colleges more and more. But by nineteen oh five football was starting to rule over all the other sports, where college football and baseball became the mainstays, and by nineteen oh five football was a brutal sport. It had eighteen deaths in one hundred and forty nine serious injuries reported that year alone. The game resembled something more of what we see rugby today, with mashed formations and gang tackling with little protection for the athletes. And when the death of a Union college player, Harold P. Moore happened in November of nineteen oh five, the public called for reform. Many colleges, like Columbia NYU just canceled their football programs completely, while others switched over to the game of rugby. But there was one man that wanted to change what was going on, in steps President Theodore Roosevelt, who viewed football as a way to build character, as he had been watching his son's play and had seen how it became more physical, more vulgar, and had poor sportsmanship. So he held a summons at the White House where he invited representatives from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, including legendary coach Walter Camp, to discuss the rules of football, and the goal was to eliminate unfortsmanlike contact and reduce the violence and hopefully the danger of playing this great game. Well. From this event. From this one event, nothing actually happened, but it put into motion things that were coming, and the group issued a statement condemning the rough play, and following the summit at NYU, Chancellor convened a meeting of thirteen colleges in December nineteen oh five to discuss the future of football, and this led to a larger gathering of over sixty schools later that month, where they officially founded the inter Athletic Association of America to help put into place rules that could help make the game safer, and by nineteen oh six new rules were introduced, including the forward passed neutral zones between the offense and defensive lines and stricter regulations to reduce injury, and the IAAUS selected Palmer E. Pearce, a Brigadier general and former athletic director of West Point, as their first president, and he served till nineteen thirteen and would come back in nineteen seventeen to serve for another twelve years. He emphasized home rule, which allowed members institutions to maintain independence while adhered to standardize rules, and despite initial hesitations for some schools like Yale and Harvard and Princeton, that actually expanded quite rapidly, from thirty nine schools initially in nineteen oh six to over one hundred and fifty by nineteen thirty one, and today there is over eleven hundred schools that are part of the NCAA. Now. The reason why there was some hesitation was institutions were reluctant due to travel costs and existing conference affiliations that they had gone through in the early years. However, with President Roosevelt backing this, it gave it credibility and influence that many schools were able to follow, and in the early years, students with faculty supervision continued to manage the athletic events, giving it a more decentral nature, and by nineteen ten, the iaa US changed its name into the NCUBLEA, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, marking the first steps to become what we know today as it was rebranding to reflect the growth and influence of intercollegiate sports on a national scale, and by nineteen twenty one they held their very first national championship where they held the National Collegiate Track and Field Championship, and this would be a stepping stone for them to put on even more of their sports national championships, which as of now, going through March Madness, we know is huge in the sporting world, and they continue to add other sports and they had added basketball in nineteen thirty nine was the very first NCUBLEA Basketball championship, now the NCUBLEA to continuously change rules and allow to help the safety of the teams, and they changed their focus to lessen recruiting abuse, financial incentives for athletes, and focused on amateurism. And this focus continued to grow in the nineteen fifties and sixties, creating new challenges for the nc DOUBLEA as they centralized control for TD contracts and limited broadcasts to protect game's attendance. Then in nineteen fifty one, Walter Bayers became the first executive director of the nc DOUBLEA, transforming the organization into a powerful governing body, and he is the one that introduced the term student athlete to emphasize amateurism and shield the school from liability of athletes injuries, and took control of the television rights and gave enforcement power to the NCUBA to penalize schools for violations they had and introduced the death penalty, which is a complete suspension of a program. And in nineteen seventy three, they created different divisions Division one, two, and three to allow the shorts to decide which area they fit best into. Division one focus more on larger programs with televised sports, and Division III focused on smaller schools who want more flexibility with the lesser budget. And in nineteen eighty five, they passed and academic reporting requirements and financial audits for athletic departments as well as a drug testing policy, which really puts us into the modern age where academics is just as important as what's on the field. This where financial audits show how athletic departments really run from a financial standpoint, and drug testing really helped equalize the game keeping players safe. But despite all the changes the NCAA's gone through, many skirt the rules or violate the rules. There have been death penalties put into place, there have been gambling issues, there have been issues across the college athletic world. But without this organization, we would not have the college sports that we love today. The NCAA transformed the sporting world when they were formed by giving a standardized rules and helping make the sporting world safe. That doesn't mean that deaths don't happen in NCAA. They do still to this day. They are much less and more commonly caused by medical situations that are unknown. But the NCAA is now at a crossroads where the schools have become more powerful, where name, image and likeness has transformed the college sports world and allowing players to get paid on top of their scholarships. Has helped players, but has put the schools and the NCUBLEA in a tough situation where in the next ten years is going to be a pivotal moment in these organizations that may change how college sports is perceived and even run to this day. I'm looking forward to the future, but it's going to be a bumpy ride, and hopefully the NCAA can look back on its history to continue to grow the sports that we love today. I want to thank you for listening to today's Daily Sports History. 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