December 29
NCAA DAY
In the early 1900s, college football was a brutal game ... so rough that many students suffered serious injuries and sometimes, death. This prompted many schools to discontinue the sport. Others urged that football be reformed or abolished from intercollegiate athletics.
U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt summoned college athletics leaders to two White House conferences to encourage such reforms. In early December 1905, Chancellor Henry M. MacCracken of New York University held a meeting with 13 institutions to initiate changes in football rules. At a subsequent meeting on December 28 in New York City, the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (IAAUS) was founded by 62 members.
The IAAUS was officially constituted the following spring. Then, on this day in 1910, it changed its name to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).
Today, the NCAA is a voluntary association representing more than 1,200 institutions, conferences, organizations and individuals devoted to the sound administration of intercollegiate athletics.
The Association strives to maintain intercollegiate athletics as an integral part of the educational program and the athlete as an integral part of the student body. The NCAA also stands for good conduct in intercollegiate athletics and serves as the colleges’ national athletics accrediting agency.
If it weren’t for the National Collegiate Athletic Association, there would be no college bowl games nor any college sports, for that matter. So, let’s hear it for the NCAA:
Rah! Rah! Sis-boom-ba!
Those Were the Days, the Today in History service from 440 International
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