NCAA: Exercising Your Education
Welcome to your end zone: a three-part series on collegiate athletic associations and programs.
If you want to play sports at the intercollegiate level, it means that you have to attend a college that belongs to one of the four major intercollegiate associations: the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association), the NAIA (National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics), the NJCAA (National Junior College Athletic Association), or the NCCAA (National Christian College Association.)
This is the first installment. It covers what the NCAA association and its divisions are all about and whether you are good enough to make the cut!
The NCAA - Unabbreviated
The NCAA is the most well known of the associations and is actually the largest collegiate athletic organization in the world. The NCAA is a voluntary association which consists of about 1,200 institutions, conferences, organizations, and individuals and is responsible for organizing the athletic programs of many colleges and universities in the United States.The NCAA oversees all areas of athletics for four-year college members, including recruiting, eligibility and financial aid.
Colleges affiliated with the NCAA are ranked as either Division I, II or III. Larger colleges are part of Division I while smaller colleges belong to Division II or III. Division I football is also divided into I-A (now called Football Bowl Subdivision or FBS) and I-AA (Football Championship Subdivision or FCS), where, you guessed it, I-A are the more competitive teams. Division I-AAA was then added to Division I schools that don’t have a football program at all.
Making the Cut
If you dream of going the whole nine yards and becoming a professional athlete, Division I is the way to go. It is the most competitive with the highest profile and it offers full and partial athletic scholarships.
If want to play sports seriously in college but don’t think you want to make a career out of it, then Division II schools may be your best option. Division II is the second tier, with an above average level of competition and scholarship opportunities.
If your college education is still more important than athletics, then choose Division III. Division III is made up mostly of smaller colleges; athletes in this division are students first and athletes second, and, Division III don’t offer athletic scholarships (although they do still offer other financial aid options and academic scholarships).
The NCAA holds intercollegiate championship tournaments for a whole slew of sports including basketball, baseball (men), softball (women), football (men), ice hockey, cross country, field hockey (women), bowling (women), golf, fencing (co-ed), lacrosse, soccer, gymnastics, rowing (women), volleyball, water polo, riflery (co-ed), tennis, skiing (co-ed), track and field, swimming, diving, and wrestling (men).
So if you are interested, keep practicing to stay on top of your game.
To exercise your options and keep ‘em open, check in for my second blog in the series that I post next week on the NAIA!
Photograph by Badger 23 (flickr)
This entry was posted on Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 4:19 pm and is filed under Athletic Associations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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