Glossary
A
ABR – Athletes Bill of Rights; federal bills (2020 and 2022) principally sponsored by Senators Richard Blumenthal and Corey Booker
ACC – Atlantic Coast Conference (Power 5 conference); historically comprised of schools in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast regions such as UNC, UVA, Clemson, and Duke; expanded its footprint from New York to Florida in conference realignment 1.0; expanded its footprint to the West Coast in conference realignment 2.0
ACE – American Council on Education; an advocacy group for academic interests hostile to athletes’ rights
AIAW – Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women; founded in 1971 in anticipation of Title IX; designed to maximize participation opportunities for women; commandeered by the NCAA
Alston - see NCAA v Alston below
APR - Academic Progress Rate (made up and dumbed down NCAA academic performance metric)
Amateurism – a vague, exclusionary social convention of the 19th-century British aristocracy premised on the assumption that gentlemen do not participate in sporting activities for money; the NCAA has used this principle to justify fixing the cost of athlete labor at the value of an athletics scholarship
Antitrust Immunity - provides exemption from America’s free-competition laws (Sherman and Clayton Acts); NCAA seeks immunity to impose its amateurism-based compensation limits without legal accountability
Autonomy Legislation – created separate legislative classification in 2014 for Power 5 conferences only; allowed Power 5 to offer certain modest additional benefits for athletes above the cost of a scholarship without having to seek legislative approval from the entire Association; Power 5 threatened to leave the NCAA if they were not granted Autonomy status; created an association within an association
B
Big Three – Harvard, Princeton, and Yale in the early 20th century; dominated college football
Big Ten – Big Ten Conference (Power 5); historically comprised of schools from the Midwest, such as Ohio State, Michigan, and Indiana; recently expanded its footprint to include USC, UCLA, Washington, and Oregon
Big 12 – Big 12 Conference (Power 5); formed in 1996 during conference realignment 1.0 from former Southwest Conference and Big Eight Conference schools (Texas and Heartland schools); key members University of Texas-Austin and University of Oklahoma left for the SEC in 2021; Big 12 added several non-Power 5 schools and Pac-12 schools in conference realignment 2.0
Board of Regents – shorthand for 1984 NCAA v Board of Regents antitrust lawsuit in which the US Supreme Court struck down the NCAA’s monopoly over televised football as a violation of free competition laws; allowed big-time football to have their financial freedom from the NCAA; considered one of the most critical milestones in college sports history
Brand, Myles - NCAA president from 2003 – 2009 (former university president at Indiana University); devised the “collegiate model” of college athletics
Byers, Walter - NCAA’s first full-time CEO; served from 1951 – 1987; architect of modern NCAA in the television era; published auto-biographical book in 1995 turning on NCAA’s foundational principles such as amateurism and the “student-athlete”
C
Camp, Walter - “father” of American football; invented and commercialized game in late 19th century and early 20th century; close ties to Yale
Carnegie Report – 1929 study of American college athletics by the Carnegie Foundation; condemnation of emerging football market as inconsistent with values of higher education; treated as a liturgy by academic interests
CCB – Commission on College Basketball; formed in response to the 2017 basketball “scandal” and made recommendations to “clean up” college basketball and overhaul the NCAA infractions and enforcement process for high-stakes cases
CFA – College Football Association; formed in 1977 by big-time football schools, mainly from the South, to have more control over the televised football market; CFA inspired the Board of Regents lawsuit
CFP – College Football Playoff; created in 2012, CFP is big-time football’s first playoff format to determine a national champion; it replaced the Bowl Championship Series
Collegiate Model – framework invented by Myles Brand to reconcile professionalized big-time college sports with values of higher education; required maximum revenue generation in big-time football and men’s basketball; revenue theoretically to be redistributed to nonrevenue/”Olympic” sports that could not pay for themselves
Conference Commissioner – CEO of a conference entity
Conference Realignment 1.0 (1990s – 2012) – the first wave of schools changing conferences to aggregate football power to make conference broadcast media deals more lucrative; resulted in the creation of “Power 5” conferences
Conference Realignment 2.0 – (2021 - 2023) – SEC takes Texas and Oklahoma from Big 12; Big Ten takes UCLA, USC, Washington, and Oregon from Pac-12; Big 12 takes Utah, Arizona, and Arizona State from the Pac-12; ACC accepts Cal and Stanford from Pac-12 and SMU from AAC; as with conference realignment 1.0, this round fueled by aggregation of football market power
E
EADA – Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act of 1994 (federal reporting law to gauge compliance with Title IX; includes financial disclosures)
Emmert, Mark - NCAA president from 2010 - 2022; turbulent tenure while navigating changes to the college sports marketplace and regulatory model; came under increasing criticism through the NIL era; during a June 9th, 2021 hearing in Senate Commerce, TN Senator Marsha Blackburn called for new NCAA leadership
Equivalency Scholarships – full scholarship units that may be divided into “partial scholarships”
F
FCOA – full cost of attendance scholarship; identical in purpose to laundry money from the 1950s, FCOA is a component of financial aid available to all students to cover the sundry expenses of college life; from 1973 – 2014, the NCAA and Power 5 set the athletic scholarship below the total cost of attending college and aggressively opposed the FCOA scholarship; the FCOA was awarded to athletes as a NIL remedy in the O’Bannon suit
FLSA - Fair Labor Standards Act; federal law that protects hourly workers’ rights relating to hourly wages and overtime
G
GSR - Graduation Success Rate; NCAA-created academic measurement implemented in the early 2000s as an alternative to the more conservative Federal Graduation Rate; GSR has been criticized as a manufactured metric that overstates academic “success”
H
Head Count Scholarship Sport – full scholarships that cannot be divided; commonly referred to as a “full ride”
Home Rule – decentralized college sports regulatory model in the first half of the 20th century that left rulemaking and compliance in the hands of schools and conferences rather than the NCAA
House v NCAA – 2020 federal antitrust suit by athletes challenging NCAA limits on name, image and likeness
I
IARP – Independent Accountability Resolution Process; product of recommendations of the Commission on College Basketball; designed to be an “independent” infractions/enforcement process for “high stakes” cases; eliminated in 2022
I&E – Infractions and Enforcement; NCAA in-house investigation and enforcement apparatus that prosecutes alleged NCAA rules violations
Iron Throne - used in DYK website as a metaphor in the battle for regulatory supremacy in college sports
Institutional Control - NCAA governance principle that places ultimate authority for the conduct and control of intercollegiate athletics with university presidents and chancellors
J
Johnson v NCAA – 2019 federal lawsuit by athletes under the Fair Labor Standards Act in which athletes contend they are employees within the meaning of the Act and therefore entitled to an hourly wage
K
Knight Commission – Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics; formed by the Knight Foundation in 1989 to align values of big-time college sports with values of higher education; preached reduced commercialization and professionalization; premised on presidential control at the institutional level; key Reports in 1991, 2001, and 2010
L
Laundry Money – monthly stipend part of full athletic scholarship in 1956 that paid for sundry living expenses; rescinded in 1973 as a cost-cutting measure (compare FCOA)
N
NLRA - National Labor Relations Act; law providing American workers a broad range of labor protections; only applies to employees
NLRB - National Labor Relations Board; adjudication and investigatory body that applies and enforces the terms of the NLRA
NCAA – National Collegiate Athletic Association; voluntary, nonprofit college sports association of approximately 1,100 member institutions across three Divisions; founded in 1906 ostensibly to address at the national level injuries and deaths in college football
NCAA Division I – the highest and most commercialized/professionalized NCAA division; all of the brand name schools compete in this division; approximately 360 schools and 190,000 athletes
NCAA Division II – lower-level competition; some partial athletics scholarships available; approximately 310 schools and 125,000 athletes;
NCAA Division III – least competitive athletically; schools do not award athletic scholarships; the vast majority are small private schools; approximately 440 schools and 200,000 athletes
NCAA BOG – NCAA Board of Governors; only association-wide NCAA governing body
NCAA Division I BOD – NCAA Division I Board of Directors; most powerful NCAA legislative body; dominated by big-time conferences and schools
NCAA v Alston – 2014 federal antitrust suit by athletes challenging all NCAA amateurism-based compensation limits; reduced to educational benefits; NCAA sought judicially created antitrust immunity; US Supreme Court ruled unanimously that NCAA must be held to the same standard under antitrust laws as any other market participant
Northwestern – 2014 attempt by Northwestern University football players to form a union under the National Labor Relations Act; regional board found that N’western football players met the definition of “employee”
O
O’Bannon v NCAA – 2009 federal antitrust suit by athletes challenging the NCAA’s compensation limits on name, image, and likeness
“Olympic Sport” – used as a catch-all for all nonrevenue sports; almost all NCAA “Olympic” sports lose money; NCAA began using the term “Olympic” sports rather than “nonrevenue” sports in the early 2010s to highlight the NCAA’s claimed role as an Olympic development pipeline
P
Pac-12 – Pac-12 conference (Power 5); traditionally comprised of schools from the West Coast such as UCLA, USC, Washington, and Oregon; now defunct after losing all but two schools in conference realignment 2.0
Power 5 – five top conferences in college sports (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, SEC) after conference realignment 1.0; Pac-12 no longer exists after conference realignment 2.0
Preemption - federal constitutional power derived from Article VI of the US Constitution (“Supremacy Clause”) that permits the federal government to prevent states from regulating areas of vital national interest; NCAA and Power 5 seek to use this authority to eliminate states from the regulatory field in college sports
S
SAAC – Student Athlete Advisory Committee; NCAA-sanctioned and controlled committee that purports to represent the “athlete voice”
Sanity Code (1948-1950) – compromise scholarship to control recruiting environment post-WWII; need-based scholarships; athletic ability could be considered, but applicant must comply with academic standards for “regular” students; seven schools known as the Seven Sinners (mostly southern schools) refused to comply with Code; vote to expel Seven failed which ended the Sanity Code debate
SB 206 – California law signed into law September 30, 2019; granted athletes in California name, image, and likeness rights; first state law in the nation to do so
SEC – Southeastern Conference (Power 5);
“Student-Athlete” – a term made up by Walter Byers and NCAA lawyers in the 1950s to counter workers’ compensation suits by injured athletes; term designed to deemphasize labor relationship between athletes and institutions; NCAA has used the term to mean that athletes can’t be employees
T
Tarkanian – refers to NCAA v Tarkanian lawsuit by former University of Nevada Las Vegas head men’s basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian; Tarkanian challenged NCAA infractions/enforcement case against him as a violation of federal due process requirements; it became an epic decades-long battle with the NCAA; resulted in 1988 US Supreme Court decision NCAA v Tarkanian in which the court held the NCAA did not have to provide federal due process protections in its enforcement cases because the NCAA was not a “state actor”
Title IX – passed in 1972, it prohibits discrimination based on sex for educational institutions receiving federal education-related funds; includes college athletics
W
White v NCAA – 2006 federal antitrust suit in which athletes challenged the NCAA’s scholarship limit then set below the full cost of attending college
Working Group – the NCAA Board of Governors Federal and State Legislation Working Group; formed in May of 2019 to respond to a federal name, image, and likeness bill and also California’s SB 206; became the conduit for the NCAA’s and Power 5 ‘s campaign in Congress for sweeping federal protections and immunities
