College basketball most often refers to the American
basketball competitive governance structure established by the
National Collegiate Athletic Association, or NCAA.
History In 1904, 13 years after basketball was invented, and after being exposed to the game over the summer at Harvard University, Coach
Edwin Henderson introduced basketball to a physical education class at
Howard University in Washington, D. C. By 1910, basketball was one of the most popular sports among young African-Americans. The game could be played on almost any surface, and it required little or no equipment. It was promoted largely in the
Young Men's Christian Associations (YMCAs) in Black neighborhoods, on basketball courts indoors and outdoors, at parks and on playgrounds.
By 1915, African-Americans played basketball in high school physical education classes, on college and university squads, and on club teams representing major urban cities. Some of the first predominantly Black universities to form basketball teams include
Hampton University in Virginia;
Lincoln University in Pennsylvania;
Wilberforce University in Ohio; and
Virginia Union in Richmond. In 1916, the all-Black
Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA) was formed, uniting Virginia Union,
Shaw University (Raleigh, North Carolina), Lincoln and Howard in competition.
Four years later, the all-Black
Southeastern Athletic Conference was established, and by 1928 there were four all-Black regional conferences.
At the college level, African-American athletes such as
Paul Robeson at
Rutgers University, Wilbur Wood at
Nebraska,
Fenwich Watkins at the
University of Vermont and
Cumberland Posey at
Penn State and Duquesne became basketball stars before
World War I in white major-college programs.
George Gregory, Jr., the 6'-4" captain and center of the
Columbia University team from 1928-1931, became the first African American all-American college basketball player, in 1931.
Several black college basketball programs stood out.
Xavier University of Louisiana won 67 games and lost only two between 1934 and 1938, and
Alabama State University,
Lincoln University in Missouri,
Morgan State University in Maryland and
Wiley College in Texas all produced exceptional basketball programs.
From the 1920s until 1947, few African-American players were allowed in major college programs. One notable exception was
Jackie Robinson, a multi-sport star (1939-1941) at
UCLA just before
World War II, who went on to greater fame for breaking
Major League Baseball's
20th-century color line. Robinson's honors at UCLA were impressive: for two years highest scorer in basketball competition in the
Pacific Coast Conference, national champion long (then "broad") jumper, the school's first athlete to letter in four sports, All-American football halfback and varsity baseball shortstop. He left UCLA in 1941 because of financial pressures, not many credits from a bachelor's degree.
In 1947,
William Garrett integrated big-time college basketball by joining the basketball program at
Indiana University. He broke the gentlemen's agreement that had barred black players from the
Big Ten Conference, at that time college basketball's most important conference. While enduring taunts from opponents and pervasive segregation at home and on the road, Garrett became the best player Indiana had ever had, an all-American, and, in 1951, the third African-American drafted in the NBA. Within a year of his graduation from IU, there were six African-American basketball players on Big Ten teams.
Indiana was an unlikely place for a civil rights breakthrough. It was stone-cold isolationist, widely segregated and hostile to change. But in the late 1940s, Indiana had a leader of the largest black YMCA in the world, which viewed sports as a wedge for broader integration; a visionary university president, who believed his institution belonged to all citizens of the state; a passion for high school and college basketball; and a teenager who was, as nearly as any civil rights pioneer has ever been, the perfect person for his time and role. Slowly from there, Division I college basketball became integrated.
The
Loyola University (Chicago) teams of the early 1960s, coached by George Ireland, are thought to be responsible for ushering in a new era of racial equality in the sport by shattering all remaining color barriers in NCAA men's basketball. Beginning in 1961, Loyola broke the longstanding
gentlemen's agreement (not to play more than three black players at any given time), putting as many as four black players on the court at every game.
[3] For the 1962-63 season, Ireland played four black Loyola starters in every game. That season, Loyola also became the first team in NCAA Division I history to play an all-black lineup, doing so in a game against
Wyoming in December of 1962.
[4] In 1963, Loyola shocked the nation and changed college basketball forever by starting four black players in the NCAA Championship game, as well as playing five black players during the game. Loyola's stunning upset of two-time defending NCAA champion
Cincinnati, in overtime by a score of 60-58, was the crowning achievement in the school's nearly decade long struggle with racial inequality in men's college basketball, highlighted by the tumultuous events of that year's NCAA Tournament.
[5] Loyola's
1963 NCAA title was historic not only for the racial makeup of Loyola's team, but also due to the fact that Cincinnati had started 3 black players, making 7 of the ten starter's in the 1963 NCAA Championship game black.
[6] Another memorable event for African-Americans in college basketball came three years later in the
1966 NCAA championship game, in which
Texas Western College (now
University of Texas at El Paso) coach
Don Haskins started five African-American players. The Miners beat favorite
Kentucky 72-65 to win the 1966 NCAA title. The team's victory inspired the 2006 movie
Glory Road. (Contrary to the film's treatment, the racial and social significance of the 1966 game has been entirely in retrospect.)
In
1970,
Illinois State hired
Will Robinson as the first African-American head coach of a major college basketball program
[7].
Division I Men's Basketball These teams play in 31 different conferences, some of which are considered either
major,
mid-major, or
low-major conferences by the general public and sports media. Due to the term low-major having degrading connotations, some major media outlets and analysts have recently taken to calling the upper-tier of the
non-BCS conferences "high-majors" while calling the bottom 16 of the 31 conferences "mid-majors".
[8][9][10] These distinctions are all unofficial; in fact, there is no real definition as to what makes a college basketball conference a
major,
high-major, or
mid-major outside of being a
BCS member in
football. After all, the winners of all 30 conference tournaments (plus the Ivy League's regular-season champion) receive an automatic bid to play in the
NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament alongside 34
at-large selections made by the selection committee during the
selection process. Most of the 34 at-large selections on
Selection Sunday go to major-conference teams. The following are currently considered by most experts to be the major conferences in college basketball:
[11] [12] [13] The
Missouri Valley Conference, once regarded as one of the top conferences in all of college athletics from the 1940s through the 1970s due in part to its
dominance in men's basketball (17 Final Fours in 35 years, second only to the Big 10 during that span), has again gained recognition as a "major" conference.
[14] [15] The Valley has now placed at least two teams in every NCAA tournament since 1998, and in the 2005-06 season, six of its ten teams were considered possible at-large NCAA entrants, with four eventually entering the tournament (
Southern Illinois as tournament champion, plus three at-large), while the remaining two teams went on to accept top-two seeds in the
NIT.
Finally, two schools from "mid-major" conferences have been accepted as "major" programs, despite their conference affiliation:
[16] [17] Gonzaga's present day situation in the
West Coast Conference is much like UNLV's situation was in the Big West Conference in the early 1990s, as a widely recognized "major" program despite its conference affiliation. Since making the
Elite Eight in
1999, the Bulldogs have made the tournament field every year, even in the one year they failed to win the West Coast Conference tournament. They play a nationally competitive nonconference schedule, frequently winning against teams from "power" conferences, and have been a fixture in the national rankings for most of the years since (they had a subpar 2006-07 season by their recent standards, but still reached the NCAA tournament).
Memphis was arguably the biggest basketball victim of the cycle of conference realignment that took place from 2003 through 2005. The Tigers had previously been one of several perennially strong programs in Conference USA, which at the time was unanimously considered a major basketball conference. However, when the dust settled from the wave of realignment, all of the Conference USA basketball powers except for Memphis had moved on to other conferences, most of them to the Big East.
The current members of the six BCS conferences and the Mountain West Conference (MWC) have won every
NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship since 1967, although some teams' championships predate their memberships in their current conferences (including all championships from MWC members).
The term "mid-major" is now used in two distinct senses. Some use it to describe all Division I schools outside of the recognized "major" conferences: the members of the remaining D-I conferences, plus independent schools not belonging to a conference:
However, the term is increasingly being used to describe a smaller group of conferences that generally produce quality teams, most of which frequently send at least one at-large team to the tournament field. This is the group of conferences that have routinely finished as the 8th through 15th rated conferences in recent years (post 2004):
[18] Whatever the definition, no mid-major team reached the
Final Four from 1979, when
Penn and a
Larry Bird-led
Indiana State both made it to the semifinals, each losing to
Magic Johnson's Michigan State team (Penn in the semifinals, and Indiana State in the final), until UNLV in 1987. UNLV went to the Final FOur three times under Jerry Tarkanian, reaching it in 1987, 1990, and 1991. UNLV won the National Title in 1990, defeating Duke. Massachusetts reached the Final Four in 1996 as a member of the Atlantic-10 led by star center Marcus Camby and coach John Calapari. In 2006
George Mason of the Colonial Athletic Association defeated two 2005 Final Four teams and 2006 regional top seed
UConn on its way to the Final Four. However, the trend in recent years has been towards parity among all the schools in
Division I, and practically every year a perennial major-conference power loses to an unheralded mid-major team in
the tournament.
Finally, a small number of teams (currently 10) compete in Division I basketball as so-called
Independents, unaffiliated with any conference. Typically, these teams have just moved up to Division I from a lower division and compete independently while hoping eventually to secure a spot in a conference. Unlike in football, they are generally among the least-competitive teams in Division I college basketball.
Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC)
Big East Conference Big Ten Conference Big 12 Conference Missouri Valley Conference (The Valley, MVC)
Pacific Ten Conference (Pac-10)
Southeastern Conference (SEC)
Gonzaga University of the West Coast Conference
University of Memphis of Conference USA
Atlantic 10 Conference America East Conference Atlantic Sun Conference Big Sky Conference Big South Conference Big West Conference Colonial Athletic Association Conference USA Horizon League Ivy League Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Mid-American Conference Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference Mountain West Conference Northeast Conference Ohio Valley Conference Patriot League Southern Conference Southland Conference Southwestern Athletic Conference Sun Belt Conference The Summit League West Coast Conference Western Athletic Conference Atlantic 10 Conference Colonial Athletic Association Conference USA Horizon League Mid-American Conference Mountain West Conference Western Athletic Conference West Coast Conference Conferences In past decades, the
NBA only drafted players whose collegiate class had graduated. This was a mutually beneficial relationship for the NBA and colleges—the colleges held onto players who would otherwise go professional, and the NBA did not have to fund a minor league. For the most part, players benefited from the college education. As the college game became commercialized, though, it became increasingly difficult for "student athletes" to be students. Specifically, a growing number of poor, under-educated, highly talented teenage basketball players found the system exploitative—they brought in funds to schools where they learned little and played without income.
The
American Basketball Association began to employ players whose college classes had not yet graduated. After a season of
junior college, a season at the
University of Detroit, and an
Olympic gold medal,
Spencer Haywood played the 1969-70 season with the ABA's
Denver Rockets. He signed with the NBA's
Seattle SuperSonics in
1970, before his college class graduation, defying NBA rules. Haywood pleaded that, as his family's sole wage earner, he should be allowed to earn a living in the NBA or else his family would face destitution. The ensuing legal battle went to the
U.S. Supreme Court which ruled in
1971 that the NBA does not have the same
antitrust exemption enjoyed by
Major League Baseball. Thereafter, collegiate players demonstrating economic hardship were allowed early entry into the
NBA Draft. The hardship requirement was eliminated in
1976.
In
1974,
Moses Malone joined the
Utah Stars of the
ABA (now merged with the
NBA) straight out of high school and went on to a
Hall of Fame career. The past 30 years have seen a remarkable change in the college game. The best international players routinely skip college entirely, many American stars skip college (
Kevin Garnett,
Kobe Bryant,
Tracy McGrady and
LeBron James) or only play one year (
Carmelo Anthony), and only a dozen or so college graduates are now among the 60 players selected in the annual
NBA Draft. Fewer high schoolers will progress directly to the NBA without at least one year of college basketball beginning in
2006; citing maturity concerns after several incidents involving young players, the labor agreement between players and owners now specifies that players must turn 19 years of age during the calendar year of the draft to be eligible. Additionally, U.S. players must be at least one year removed from their high school graduation.
The pervasiveness of college basketball throughout the nation, the large population of graduates from "major conference" universities, and the NCAA's marketing of "
March Madness" (officially the
NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship), have kept the college game alive and well. Some commentators have argued that the higher turnover of players has increased the importance of good coaches. Many teams have been highly successful, for instance, by emphasizing personality in their recruiting efforts, with the goal of creating a cohesive group that, while lacking stars, plays together for all 4 years and thus develops a higher level of sophistication than less stable teams could achieve.
Relationship to Professional Basketball Only nine schools have reached each of the last nine Men's NCAA Division I Tournaments. No major conference has produced more than two of those teams and one of the teams does not belong to a major conference. They are Arizona, Duke, Florida, Gonzaga, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan State, Texas and Wisconsin. Along with those nine, an additional three schools have reached each of the last six tournaments. They are Illinois, Pittsburgh, and Southern Illinois.
The number 9 seed beats the number 8 seed more often than not.
Unlike NBA Basketball, NCAA Division I Basketball features two 20 minute halves.
Trivia While less commercialized, Division I,
Division II and
Division III, both Women's and Men's, are highly successful college basketball organizations. Women's Division I is often televised, but to smaller audiences than Men's Division I. Generally, small colleges join Division II, while colleges of all sizes that choose not to offer athletic scholarships join Division III. D-II and D-III games, understandably, are almost never televised, although CBS televises the Championship Final of Division II, while CBS-owned
CSTV televises the semifinals as well as the Division III Final. Many teams at these levels have rabid fan bases, though, and to those fans these games can be equally or more entertaining than big-time college basketball.
See also College football College hockey
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