The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, and United States Virgin Islands. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges and helps over 500,000 college student athletes who compete annually in college sports. The organization is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana.
NCAA Division I (D-I) is the highest level of intercollegiate athletics sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States, which accepts players globally. D-I schools include the major collegiate athletic powers, with large budgets, more elaborate facilities and more athletic scholarships than Divisions II and III as well as many smaller schools committed to the highest level of intercollegiate competition.
NCAA Division III (D-III) is a division of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States. D-III consists of athletic programs at colleges and universities that choose not to offer athletic scholarships to their student-athletes.
Robert Lee Dodd was an American college football player and coach, college baseball coach, and college athletics administrator. He served as the head football coach at Georgia Tech from 1945 to 1966, compiling a record of 165–64–8. His teams won consecutive Southeastern Conference (SEC) title in 1951 and 1952, and his 1952 Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets football team won the 1953 Sugar Bowl and was recognized as a national champion by a number of selectors though they finished second behind Michigan State in both major polls. Dodd was also Georgia Tech's head baseball coach from 1932 to 1939, tallying a mark of 43–64–2, and the school's athletic director from 1950 until 1976. All together, Dodd served Georgia Tech 57 years in various capacities.
The Vanderbilt Commodores are the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent Vanderbilt University, located in Nashville, Tennessee. Vanderbilt fields 16 varsity teams, 14 of which compete at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I level as a member of the Southeastern Conference (SEC). Vanderbilt's women's lacrosse team plays in the American Athletic Conference. The bowling team plays in Conference USA (C-USA), which absorbed Vanderbilt's former bowling home of the Southland Bowling League after the 2022–23 season. The University of Tennessee Volunteers are Vanderbilt's primary athletic rival, and the only other SEC team in Tennessee.
College athletics in the United States or college sports in the United States refers primarily to sports and athletic training and competition organized and funded by institutions of tertiary education.
An athletic scholarship is a form of scholarship to attend a college or university or a private high school awarded to an individual based predominantly on their ability to play in a sport. Athletic scholarships are common in the United States and to a certain extent in Canada, but in the vast majority of countries in the world they are rare or non-existent.
A walk-on, in American and Canadian college athletics, is an athlete who becomes part of a team without being recruited and awarded an athletic scholarship. A team's walk-on players are normally the weakest players and relegated to the scout team, and may not even be placed on the official depth chart or traveling team, while the scholarship players are the team's main players. However, a walk-on player occasionally becomes a noted member of the team.
In college athletics in the United States, recruiting is the process in which college coaches add prospective student athletes to their roster each off-season. This process typically culminates in a coach extending an athletic scholarship offer to a player who is about to be a junior in high school or higher. There are instances, mostly at lower division universities, where no athletic scholarship can be awarded and where the player pays for tuition, housing, and textbook costs out of pocket or from financial aid. During this recruiting process, schools must comply with rules that define who may be involved in the recruiting process, when recruiting may occur and the conditions under which recruiting may be conducted. Recruiting rules seek, as much as possible, to control intrusions into the lives of prospective student-athletes. The NCAA defines recruiting as “any solicitation of prospective student-athletes or their parents by an institutional staff member or by a representative of the institution’s athletics interests for the purpose of securing a prospective student-athlete’s enrollment and ultimate participation in the institution’s intercollegiate athletics program."
Student athlete is a term used principally in the United States to describe students enrolled at postsecondary educational institutions, principally colleges and universities, but also at secondary schools, who participate in an organized competitive sport sponsored by that educational institution or school. The term student-athlete was coined in 1964 by Walter Byers, the first executive director of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The term is also interchangeable with the synonymous term “varsity athlete”.
The Cal Poly Pomona Broncos or Cal Poly Broncos are the athletic sports teams for the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.
Baseball Factory, Inc. is a United States company specializing in player development and college placement of high school baseball players. The company is headquartered in Columbia, Maryland, approximately 20 miles southwest of Baltimore. Over six hundred events, across all 50 states, are hosted by Baseball Factory throughout the year, ranging from national tryouts to camps, tournaments and showcases. As of 2017, Baseball Factory has helped over 100,000 baseball players compete at the college level, garnering more than $1 billion in scholarships.
Tom Lemming is an American high school football recruiting analyst. Tom Lemming serves as the host of The Lemming Report on CBS Sports Network, the only national weekly high school football recruiting show. He is the editor of The Tom Lemming Prep Football Report, considered by many to be "the bible" of college football recruiting.
Jordan Armand Matthews is an American football tight end who is a free agent. He played college football at Vanderbilt and was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles in the second round of the 2014 NFL Draft. Matthews has also played for the Buffalo Bills and New England Patriots, starting his career as a wide receiver before switching positions after the 2020 season.
247Sports is an American network of websites that focus mainly on athletic recruitment in college football and basketball. It is owned and operated by Paramount.
Next College Student Athlete (NCSA) is a for-profit organization that connects middle and high school student-athletes with college coaches. NCSA teaches middle and high school student-athletes about the college recruiting process.
The 2013 College Football All-America Team includes those players of American college football who have been honored by various selector organizations as the best players at their respective positions. The selector organizations award the "All-America" honor annually following the conclusion of the fall college football season. The original All-America team was the 1889 College Football All-America Team selected by Caspar Whitney and Walter Camp. In 1950, the National Collegiate Athletic Bureau, which is the National Collegiate Athletic Association's (NCAA) service bureau, compiled the first list of All-Americans including first-team selections on teams created for a national audience that received national circulation with the intent of recognizing selections made from viewpoints that were nationwide. Since 1957, College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) has bestowed Academic All-American recognition on male and female athletes in Divisions I, II, and III of the NCAA as well as National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics athletes, covering all NCAA championship sports.
The 2015 Texas Longhorns football team, known variously as "Texas", "UT", the "Longhorns", or the "Horns", was a collegiate American football team that represented the University of Texas at Austin as a member of the Big 12 Conference in the 2015 NCAA Division I FBS football season. The team played its home games at Darrell K Royal–Texas Memorial Stadium in Austin, Texas, where the team is based. The Longhorns were led by second-year head coach Charlie Strong. Shawn Watson and Joe Wickline ran the offense. Vance Bedford served as defensive coordinator. They finished the season 5–7, 4–5 in Big 12 play to finish in a three-way tie for fifth place. The 2015 team is considered among the worst teams in program history.
The Syracuse University athletics scandal involved violations of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) rules by the Syracuse University men's basketball and football programs.
The definition of amateurism within the context of collegiate sports has evolved since it was first pronounced by the NCAA upon its inception in 1906. In its early stages, changes in the NCAA's core beliefs in what a student-athlete should be rewarded and allowed to accept financially for their athletic talents had its effects on the definition of amateurism. Over the course of the 20th and early 21st century, regulatory changes, court claims, and the beliefs of NCAA authority about student-athlete compensation further developed what an amateur collegiate athlete is entitled to receive. This evolution is what impacted the evolving logistics of the NCAA Bylaw 12, which explains the current definition of amateurism and what it grants or restricts a collegiate athlete to be able to receive as compensation for their participation. These guidelines have been described to both benefit and unjustifiably limit the student-athlete and the success of institutions’ athletic performance. This debate has been a strong driver in court claims against the NCAA and the mainstream controversy about what student-athletes should have the right to receive financially.
