NCAA Conferences 101 | What are NCAA Conferences?
We’re beginning another series of blogs! We really like how they flow, don't @ us. This one is going to revolve around all the NCAA Conferences - specifically what they are, why they exist, where they’re located, who plays in them, and how they affect your college experience. For this first part, we’re going to focus on the general facts and give info about one of the NCAA conferences as a benchmark for how our future posts will look. We plan on doing 3-4 per blog so this will be a LONG series, but don’t worry we’ll organize them nicely for you by division and region.
General Info
As you know, the NCAA is divided into three main divisions. This is done based on school population, and as a result, there are some big differences in the competitive level. The conferences within each division are “smaller organizations” within the bigger picture that let schools compete on a more regional level instead of having to travel all over the country and meet requirements for competition every season. Instead, schools are only required to compete against other schools in their conference (some schools don’t need to play against every single one and this varies by conference), and outside conference competition is totally up to the person planning your season competition schedule. Think about it: it’d be impossible to play most schools since there are just so many in the US.
As in over 2,000 sports playing colleges/universities. Yeah.
Each conference is given a certain name and then usually the word “Conference” afterward. As said before, they allow more regional competition to be possible. In other words, all the schools in a conference are in a similar region of the US. Take the Ivy League for example (you’ll read more on it later in this post). All the schools that make it up are in the northeastern region of the US, particularly: Connecticut (Yale), Massachusetts (Harvard), New Hampshire (Dartmouth), New Jersey (Princeton), New York (Columbia, Cornell), Pennsylvania (Penn), and Rhode Island (Brown). These schools all compete against each other in whichever sports their athletics programs offer, and usually the rivalries between them are much more heated than those outside the conference - think of this as an unwritten rule that applies to all schools.
photo from http://www.ivyschooltours.com/
Most of the time if you’re streaming or watching a college sports event on a tv, you’ll see how different the rivalry is between schools of the same conference and schools outside. These rivalries have become so mainstream in popular culture that even the student population of the entire school is ingrained within them, and as a result school spirit and athletics culture is born. For instance, you’ve definitely heard of the Duke/UNC basketball rivalry or the Harvard/Yale rivalry in general. This also means that alumni (whether they’re athletes or not) are very active in their support of their school whenever they’re playing against their rival in anything. This allows people, young and old, to feel a sense of belonging to something much greater and richer than themselves. These conferences are able to survive mostly because of their immense popularity - millions of people tune in to watch competitions just as regular fans of sport because of the intensity with which the athletes compete, which means the conferences make hundreds of millions of dollars every year in revenue from broadcasting and streaming contracts. This all funnels back into the conference for operational costs and other potential expenses, which only serves to keep the gears turning and the loop growing (since they’re part of the NCAA which is a non-profit).
Lastly, please keep in mind that competition within conferences looks different in each one and certain rivalries are not as intense as others. Sometimes you may find that a few schools from outside a conference may still have fierce competition regardless.
The Ivy League
(Click here to find more information about the conference)
Arguably the most famous conference out there - we say that because whenever someone tries to generalize which schools they’re thinking of applying to, most people say “the Ivy’s”, even though the name has absolutely nothing to do with academics and is only related to the sports conference. The importance here is the culture that the conference name has created - one that labels all these schools with academic excellence and very selective admissions. We mentioned all the ones belonging to this conference above but here’s a nice graphic showing them again:
Photo from www.crossingbroad.com
The Ivy League got its name from the tradition of some of these schools having a day designated to planting Ivy by a University building. This ultimately became very common and all these universities adopted this until, at one point in the early 20th century, all these schools became referred to as the ivy league. But enough boring history, here are some facts that actually matter:
When it comes to sports in general, Harvard is the biggest NCAA program in existence, with over 40 teams total.
Columbia has the largest undergraduate enrollment (~9,000 students) out of all of these 8 schools, while Dartmouth has the smallest (~4,400) as per 2019 statistics.
All these schools have acceptance rates between 4% and 10%, with an average of 38,000 applications sent to them each year.
Averaged from all 8 schools.
Typically the top 4-5 Ivy League schools each season are all ranked high enough in NCAA Men’s Tennis (usually top 50 at least), that they get an automatic bid into the NCAA tournament
Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, and Princeton.
Columbia has been the dominant force in the conference, capturing the title the last 6 years and retaining an automatic berth into the NCAA tournament each year, despite consistently ranking in the top 20 every year.