The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, and Canada. 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.
A scholarship is a form of financial aid awarded to students for further education. Generally, scholarships are awarded based on a set of criteria such as academic merit, diversity and inclusion, athletic skill, and financial need.
U Sports is the national sport governing body of university sport in Canada, comprising the majority of degree-granting universities in the country. Its equivalent body for organized sports at colleges in Canada is the Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association (CCAA). Some institutions are members of both bodies for different sports.
In United States colleges, top-tier basketball is governed by collegiate athletic bodies including 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). Each of these various organizations is subdivided into one to three divisions, based on the number and level of scholarships that may be provided to the athletes. Teams with more talent tend to win over teams with less talent.
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.
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.
In the United States and Canada, a jock is a stereotype of an athlete, or someone who is primarily interested in sports and sports culture, and does not take much interest in intellectual activity. It is generally applied mostly to high school and college athletics participants who form a distinct youth subculture. As a blanket term, jock can be considered synonymous with athlete. Jocks are usually presented as male practitioners of team sports such as American football, basketball, baseball, lacrosse, soccer, swimming and ice hockey.
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.
Redshirt, in United States college athletics, is a delay or suspension of an athlete's participation in order to lengthen their period of eligibility. Typically, a student's athletic eligibility in a given sport is four seasons, aligning with the four years of academic classes typically required to earn a bachelor's degree at an American college or university. However, in a redshirt year, student athletes may attend classes at the college or university, practice with an athletic team, and "suit up" for play – but they may compete in only a limited number of games. Using this mechanism, a student athlete [traditionally] has at most five academic years to use the four years of eligibility, thus becoming what is termed a fifth-year senior. It is important to note that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, an additional year of eligibility was granted to student athletes by the NCAA who met a certain criteria. Student athletes who qualified, had up to six academic years to make use of their four years of eligibility, taking into consideration the extra year provided due to exceptional circumstances.
In American and Canadian college athletics, a walk-on is someone who becomes part of a college team without being recruited or awarded an athletic scholarship. Walk-on players are generally viewed as weaker less-significant players and may not even be placed on an official depth chart or traveling team, while the scholarship players are a 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."
The Vanderbilt Commodores baseball team is an American National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) college baseball team from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, the team participates in the Eastern division of the Southeastern Conference (SEC) and plays its home games on campus at Hawkins Field. The Commodores are coached by three-time National Coach of the Year and three-time SEC Coach of the Year, Tim Corbin. During Corbin's tenure as head coach, Vanderbilt has become one of the premier college baseball programs in the United States, responsible for 19 first-round picks in the MLB draft.
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”.
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.
Perry Eugene Wallace Jr. was an American lawyer who was a professor of law at Washington College of Law. He was the first African-American varsity athlete to play basketball under an athletic scholarship in the Southeastern Conference, playing for Vanderbilt University. His experiences at Vanderbilt are the subject of the book Strong Inside, by Andrew Maraniss, published in 2014.
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.
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.
The 1959 Eastern Michigan Hurons football team represented Eastern Michigan University in the Interstate Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (IIAC) during the 1959 NCAA College Division football season. In their eighth season under head coach Fred Trosko, the Hurons compiled a 1–7 record and were outscored by their opponents, 217 to 50. In the second game of the season, the Hurons defeated Illinois State by a 14–7 score, but then lost the six remaining games. Dave L. Longridge was the team captain and also led the team with 513 passing yards and 517 yards of total offense.
