Founded in 1906, the National Collegiate Athletic Association spent its first years as a weak organization in the shadow of the American Athletics Union (AAU), which controlled most of amateur athletics and dominated the American Olympic Committee.

By the 1950s, however, this changed; college athletics became increasingly commercial and colleges and universities turned to the NCAA both to secure revenues from television and to control the labor market (to stop bidding wars between colleges for players and to keep students in line). As in other areas of American sport, college sports became centrally administered, the main intention being the pursuit of profit for the owners (the colleges) largely at the expense of the students. While the NCAA has managed to keep up the rhetoric of serving the interests of the “student athlete,” it is difficult to see how this has happened over the years, and the recent initiative of star players making their way to the majors without pursuing a college degree suggests that many of them agree.

Prior to the Second World War, colleges had allowed the NCAA to supervise tournaments, but the policing of the sports was left to themselves. These self-imposed restraints were found to be inadequate, so in 1940 a new constitution was accepted allowing for the expulsion of colleges by a two-thirds vote of member schools. The NCAA did not use this new power, however, at a time when the pressure to field winning teams was becoming intense and when violations of NCAA rules were common. A “sanity code” was adopted in 1948 permitting allocation of jobs and scholarships to athletes, but these were based solely on financial need. This was found to be unworkable, however, and from 1952 full scholarships were based only on athletic ability.

In 1951 a college basketball scandal was unearthed, considered the biggest scandal ever in American sport. The New York District Attorney’s office accused thirty-three players from seven colleges of “point shaving”—keeping the margin of points between teams within a range called for by gamblers in return for cash payments. In 1953 the NCAA reported that Michigan State, the nation’s top college football team, operated a slush fund from which football players were paid handsomely These revelations increased the demand for a stronger NCAA, which would actually suspend or expel recalcitrant colleges.

Television further enhanced the NCAA’s authority. First, colleges needed the NCAA to negotiate with networks to ensure that television did not take away the large crowds commonly attending football games. Later, the colleges wanted the NCAA to negotiate lucrative financial packages with the networks, a process successfully capped in 1994 by CBS’ agreement to pay $1.745 billion to cover basketball’s Final Four until 2002.

Since the 1950s, the NCAA has enforced a detailed code of regulations written and voted on by members of colleges and universities. It has assisted members of schools in complying with these regulations, administered more than seventy annual championships for both men and women, produced collegiate rules of play for twelve sports and compiled and distributed statistics in football and basketball, as well as publishing a weekly newspaper. It has divided colleges into different divisions, setting rules for student athletes in each of those divisions, and, in quite intrusive ways, has governed all college-level sport.

In effect, the NCAA has governed over the establishment of farm systems for the major leagues, especially the NBA and NFL. Apprentice athletes bring millions of dollars to their colleges without receiving any payment beyond scholarships, instead playing for the opportunity to be selected as one of the yearly draft picks (achieved by only a small percentage). The Heisman Trophy winner, the best player in college football, is assured of being a first-round draft pick and of receiving a very handsome salary from the team that selects him; so are the best ten to fifteen basketball players. With stakes so high and the demands on the body so extreme in some college sports, as The Program (1993) showed, many student athletes engage in widespread use of steroids and accomplish little academically. With scholarships tied to sports eligibility these apprentices tend not to graduate from their colleges, and those who do not make the majors end up with little to show for their labor on behalf of their colleges.

In January 1983, the NCAA adopted Proposition 48 to counteract this problem, placing the blame for the failure of the student athlete on the athletes themselves and their lack of preparation for college rather than on the practices of college sports programs. The proposition required incoming student athletes attending a Division I school to have a minimum 2.0 high-school grade-point average in a core curriculum of eleven courses and a minimum score of 700 (later raised to 820 out of a possible 1,600) on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) in order to compete as a freshman. In its first year in effect, 1986, the proposition prevented almost 700 incoming freshmen from participating in their respective sports.

This proposition has been widely criticized, especially by Georgetown coach, John Thompson, and former Celtics great Bill Russell, who believe that it cuts off opportunities to African Americans in particular. Harry Edwards has noted the racial bias of SATs, but he (supported early on by Arthur Ashe) has backed the proposition, seeing it as a first step to rectify a problem that has seen large numbers of black athletes fail in college. The fact that only 31 percent of African American male athletes admitted to college in 1977 had graduated six years later, and that at Memphis State University no black basketball player earned a degree between 1973 and 1985, required some response.

One of the responses of players who could not meet the new requirements was spending a year at a junior college before transferring to a Division I school. Increasingly though, potential athletes have recognized the limited benefits they will receive from attending colleges. This tendency came to a head in the controversial basketball draft of 1996. Of the fifty-eight men registered for the draft that year, thirty-six were underclassmen (not graduated from college). Allen Iverson decided to leave Georgetown after only two years, while Kobe Bryant and Jermaine O’Neal (the latter not meeting the Proposition 48 minimum requirements) opted to skip college altogether. A few players had followed this path before (Moses Malone, Daryl Dawkins and Shawn Kemp being the most successful), but players were generally discouraged from taking this route into the NBA, many commentators and officials arguing that they needed more maturity (though the threat to the quality of the NCAA basketball product is also a factor). The success of Iverson at the Philadelphia 76’ers and Bryant at the LA Lakers represents a considerable threat to the long-term viability of the NCAA farm system.