Headquartered in Shawnee, Kansas, the NCAA is the governing body that regulates athletic competitions among many colleges and universities. Colleges and universities must elect to join the NCAA, and once they do they relinquish ultimate jurisdiction over their athletic programs, student-athletes, and coaches. To remain a member of the association, colleges and universities have to abide by NCAA rules, regulations, and policies.

Pursuant to its governing authority, the NCAA has established criteria that college athletes must satisfy to stay eligible for NCAA sanctioned athletic competitions. One of these criteria is that student-athletes be in good academic standing and maintain a certain minimum grade-point average. Schools and coaches are subject to NCAA restrictions regulating how high school students may be recruited, while both coaches and athletes are subject to discipline for violating NCAA rules relating to use of illegal or banned substances, gambling, point-shaving, and bribery.

The NCAA conducts its own investigations of alleged rule violations and assesses penalties based on the severity of the violation, after giving the suspected offender an opportunity to be heard during a public proceeding in which most fundamental legal rights may be invoked. Penalties may be assessed against an offending school, coach, or athlete and entail loss of scholarships and loss of post-season awards, including fines, probation, suspensions, forfeiture of games, and forfeiture of tournament and playoff opportunities.

Schools with repeat offenses may receive particularly harsh punishment. For instance, the NCAA cancelled the entire 1987 football season for Southern Methodist University (SMU) after investigators found numerous rules violations related to the football team, including payments to players that amounted to more than $600,000. The so-called “death penalty” that the NCAA administered in the SMU case is the harshest punishment that the NCAA has ever administered, but it is indicative of the level of power that the NCAA holds over athletic programs.

Some schools, particularly smaller colleges, choose not to be members of the NCAA. More than 280 colleges belong to the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), which is based in Olathe, Kansas. The NAIA sanctions more than a dozen sports for men and women. Two-year colleges, on the other hand, belong to the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA), based in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Member schools of the NAIA and NJCAA are subject to similar rules as schools that are members of the NCAA.

Most colleges and universities also belong to athletic conferences. These conferences establish additional rules under which their members must operate. Athletic conferences also coordinate efforts to market their sports teams and provide for plans by which revenues from athletics are shared by member schools.