Following the 1905 football season, which resulted in 18 fatalities and 159 serious injuries on college football fields, leading to cancellation of the sport by a number of colleges, President Theodore Roosevelt issued a statement to the representatives of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton that it was “up to them to save the sport of football by removing every objectionable feature.” Roosevelt added that “brutality and foul play should deserve the same summary punishment given to a man who cheats at cards.”
Chancellor Henry M. McCracken of New York University called a conference of representatives of 13 football-playing colleges to the White House in December 1905 to consider whether football should be reformed or abolished. A subsequent meeting was held December 28 in New York, and the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (IAAUS) was formed, with 62 member institutions, to modify rules and rescue football. The organization was formally organized March 31, 1906, and took the name National Collegiate Athletic Association in 1910. The changes to the rules were designed to end mass-formation-type plays (e.g., the flying wedge), incivility, and unsportsmanlike conduct. The most far-reaching rule change of 1906 was legalization of the forward pass. In 1952 a national headquarters staffed by professionals was established in Kansas City. The NCAA began administering women’s athletics programs in 1980 when Divisions II and III established 10 championships for 1981–82. In 1981 the NCAA adopted an extensive governance plan to include women’s athletics.