The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, and one in 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.
Varsity teams are sports teams that compete in university sports events.
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.
College baseball is baseball that is played by student-athletes at institutions of higher education. In the United States, college baseball is sanctioned mainly by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA); in Japan, it is governed by the All Japan University Baseball Federation (JUBF).
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 a two-tiered system.
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.
The Academic Progress Rate (APR) is a measure introduced by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the nonprofit association that organizes the athletic programs of many colleges and universities in the United States and Canada, to track student-athletes' chances of graduation. The Academic Progress Rate (APR) is a term-by-term measure of eligibility and retention for Division I student-athletes that was developed as an early indicator of eventual graduation rates.
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. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, an additional year of eligibility was granted to student athletes by the NCAA who met 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.
Brandon Vaughn Burlsworth was an American football player who was an offensive lineman of the Arkansas Razorbacks football team from 1995 to 1998. He joined the team as a walk-on and eventually became an All-American.
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 universities in the United States and Canada 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”.
NCAA student-athlete recruiting adheres to a strict process set forth by the NCAA, which includes timetables, regulations, and consequences for violations.
Oversigning is an unofficial term for the practice of American college athletic departments signing prospective student-athletes to a National Letter of Intent (NLI) that may exceed the maximum number of athletic scholarships permitted by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The NCAA limits the total number of scholarships that may be awarded in all of its sponsored sports, and in football also limits the number of scholarships awarded in a given year. Those limits differ by sport and the division in which that school participates. Most conferences have additional rules governing signing NLI.
Sean Boudreau Bedford is an American former football center. Bedford played one season as the starting center for Rivas Osos, a Spanish football team in the Liga Nacional de Fútbol Americano. He started his college football career with the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets as a walk-on and went on to win the very first Burlsworth Trophy.
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.
Matthew Harrison Stainbrook is an American basketball player for TAU Castelló of the LEB Oro. He played college basketball for the Xavier Musketeers and Western Michigan Broncos. During his two seasons of play at Xavier, Stainbrook was one of Xavier's leading scorers and rebounders.
Chris Sailer is an American football trainer of kicking specialists. He works with high school placekickers and punters and evaluates them for college football programs. Sailer was named an All-American as both a kicker and a punter while playing college football for the UCLA Bruins. He played professionally in the Arena Football League (AFL).
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.
Greater is a 2016 American biographical sports film directed by David Hunt and starring Christopher Severio as American football player Brandon Burlsworth, a walk-on college player who became an All-American, dying in a car crash 11 days after being drafted high in the 3rd round to the National Football League. The film was released on August 26, 2016. It was the last film featuring Michael Parks to be released within his lifetime.
