National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics

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NAIA redirects to this page. For the airport see Ninoy Aquino International Airport For other meanings see NAIA (disambiguation).

The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) traces its roots to the National Association of Intercollegiate Basketball. The NAIB was established on March 10, 1940 in Kansas City, Missouri. Currently, the headquarters are located in Kansas City, Missouri.[1]

The association got its start three years after a men's basketball tournament was held in Kansas City. The tournament was started by James Naismith and others who wanted to establish a forum for small colleges and universities to determine a national basketball champion. The original eight-team tournament expanded to 32 teams in 1938.

In 1948, the NAIB became the first national organization to open their intercollegiate postseason to black student-athletes. In 1952, the NAIB was transformed into the NAIA, and with that came the sponsorship of additional sports. The NAIA began sponsoring intercollegiate championships for women in 1980, the first coed national athletics association to do so. The NAIB/NAIA was formed on the grounds that the older, larger NCAA was predominantly oriented toward larger institutions, particularly those which played "big time" college football. When the NCAA created Division II and Division III in 1973, the NAIA started losing members to the NCAA, and the pace has accelerated since 1995. In 1997, the NAIA had to eliminate separate Division I and Division II football championships because of the lack of schools fielding football teams. For the 2007-08 academic year, the NAIA has 287 member institutions.

Sports: football (men), soccer, volleyball (women), cross country, basketball, swimming, track and field, wrestling (men), baseball (men), softball (women), golf, and tennis.

Ice hockey (men) was sponsored until 1984. Gymnastics (women) was sponsored until 1988.


Contents


 v • d • e NAIA Football Conferences
Central States Football League – Dakota Athletic Conference – Frontier Conference – Great Plains Athletic Conference – Heart of America Athletic Conference – Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference – Mid-South Conference – Mid-States Football Association – Independents
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Association_of_Intercollegiate_Athletics"
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