The Patriot League is a collegiate athletic conference comprising private institutions of higher education and two United States service academies based in the Northeastern United States. Outside the Ivy League, it is among the most selective group of higher education institutions in NCAA Division I and has a very high student-athlete graduation rate for both the NCAA graduation success rate and the federal graduation rate.
In sports, a division is a group of teams who compete against each other for a championship.
The Freedom Football Conference (FFC) was a college athletic conference that competed in the NCAA's Division III. Member teams were located in New England and New York. It was formed in 1992 and disbanded after the 2003 season. As can be deduced from the conference's name, teams competed within the FFC in football only. The teams competed in other conferences in other sports.
The Women's College World Series (WCWS) is the final portion of the NCAA Division I Softball Championship for college softball in the United States. The tournament format consists of two four-team double-elimination brackets. The winners of each bracket then compete in a best-of-three series to determine the Division I WCWS National Champion. The WCWS takes place at ASA Hall of Fame Stadium in Oklahoma City. From 1969 to 1981, the women's collegiate softball championship was also known as the Women's College World Series and was promoted as such. During 1969–1979, the series was played in Omaha, and in 1980–1982 in Norman, Oklahoma. The NCAA held its first six Division I tournaments in Omaha in 1982–1987, followed by Sunnyvale, California in 1988–1989. The event has been held in Oklahoma City every year since then, except for 1996 in Columbus, Georgia.
NCAA Division I (D-I) is the highest level of intercollegiate athletics sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States. D-I schools include the major collegiate athletic powers, with larger 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.
College basketball today is governed by collegiate athletic bodies including the United States's National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), the United States Collegiate Athletic Association (USCAA), the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA), and the National Christian College Athletic Association (NCCAA). Governing bodies in Canada include U Sports and the Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association (CCAA). Each of these various organizations are subdivided into from one to three divisions based on the number and level of scholarships that may be provided to the athletes.
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.
College soccer is played by teams composed of soccer players who are enrolled in colleges and universities. While it is most widespread in the United States, it is also prominent in South Korea and Canada. The institutions typically hire full-time professional coaches and staff, although the student athletes are strictly amateur and are not paid. College soccer in the United States is sponsored by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the sports regulatory body for major universities, and by the governing bodies for smaller universities and colleges. This sport is played on a rectangular field of the dimensions of about 64m (meters) - 70m sideline to sideline (width), and 100m - 110m goal line to goal line (length).
Rowing is the oldest intercollegiate sport in the United States. In the 2002–03 school year there were 1,712 male and 6,690 female collegiate rowers, representing just over 2% of total college athletes.
An athletic conference is a collection of sports teams, playing competitively against each other at the professional, collegiate, or high school level. In many cases conferences are subdivided into smaller divisions, with the best teams competing at successively higher levels. Conferences often, but not always, include teams from a common geographic region.
Sports in the United States are an important part of American culture. American football is the most popular sport to watch in the United States, followed by baseball, basketball, hockey, and soccer. Tennis, golf, wrestling, auto racing, arena football, field lacrosse, box lacrosse and volleyball are also popular sports in the country.
College ice hockey is played in Canada and the United States, though leagues exist outside North America.
College lacrosse is played by student-athletes at colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. In both countries, men's field lacrosse and women's lacrosse are played at both the varsity and club levels. College lacrosse in Canada is sponsored by the Canadian University Field Lacrosse Association (CUFLA) and Maritime University Field Lacrosse League (MUFLL), while in the United States, varsity men's and women's lacrosse is governed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) and National Association of Intercolliegiate Athletics (NAIA). There are also university lacrosse programs in the United Kingdom sponsored by British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS) and programs in Japan.
American football is the most popular sport in the United States. The National Football League has the highest average attendance of any sports league in the world. In the United States the game is most often referred to as simply "football".
The United States ice hockey structure includes elements from traditional American scholastic high school and college athletics, affiliated and independent minor leagues, the unique "major junior" leagues, as well as other various amateur junior and youth hockey leagues. The hierarchy of the ice hockey league system forms a pyramid with a large number of regional minor and development leagues making up the base of the pyramid and a linear progression through the professional minor leagues leading to the National Hockey League at the top of the pyramid.
The FIU Panthers are the athletic teams representing Florida International University, an American public university located in Miami. The Panthers currently compete in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I athletics as members of Conference USA.
Sports in Atlanta has a rich history, including the oldest on-campus NCAA Division I football stadium, Bobby Dodd Stadium, built in 1913 by the students of Georgia Tech. Atlanta also played host to the second intercollegiate football game in the South, played between the A&M College of Alabama and the University of Georgia in Piedmont Park in 1892; this game is now called the Deep South's Oldest Rivalry. The city hosts college football's annual Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl and the Peachtree Road Race, the world’s largest 10 km race. Atlanta was the host city for the Centennial 1996 Summer Olympics, and Downtown Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park was built for and commemorates the games.
There is a wide variety of organized sports in the continent of North America. The continent is the birthplace of several of these organized sports, such as basketball, gridiron football, ice hockey, lacrosse, racquetball, rodeo, ultimate, and volleyball. The modern versions of baseball and softball, skateboarding, snowboarding, stock car racing, and surfing also developed in North America.
