The NCAA has released a historical membership dashboard, a first-of-its-kind resource that includes high-level details and summary information on every NCAA member school and conference. This interactive dashboard, displayed as a map, provides a comprehensive visual catalog of member schools and conferences throughout the NCAA's history. The map allows users to view historical membership data by year, division, school, region, conference and state.
The resource, created by the NCAA research and library staffs, enables users to find information more efficiently on topics such as a school's membership history, including its conference affiliation, or a conference's composition in any given year, among others. It also showcases the NCAA's growth over time. The resource includes data from 1906, when the NCAA was founded, to the current academic year for the NCAA's 1,221 historic active and past members and 276 unique conferences.
A few highlights from the historical map include:
- The NCAA started with 39 charter members in 1906 and quickly doubled in size, reaching 80 schools by 1912.
- In 1912, the first conference, the Kansas College Athletic Conference, appeared, with 15 member schools. This conference still exists in the NAIA. In 1914, the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference first appeared as an NCAA conference and still exists as a Division II conference.
- In 1921, the NCAA surpassed the 100-member mark, and the first historically Black college and university conference joined. The 1920s saw positive gains in membership, followed by a decline in the early years of the Great Depression. Membership rebounded in the latter half of the 1930s.
- The year 1946 began the greatest run of membership increases. Over the next two decades, membership increased by at least nine every year. This run is the NCAA's longest continuous growth period.
- The largest one-year increase in NCAA history is 47 members, occurring in 1951. Total membership eclipsed 350 schools after this spike. In 1959, membership reached exactly 500.
- In 1976, the NCAA took its first official count of divisions. It lost 14 members that year. The end of dual NAIA/NCAA membership forced schools and conferences to choose one organization.
- In 1981-82, the dissolution of the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women brought women's conferences and championships under NCAA governance, which increased total membership to 753 schools.
- In 2002, the NCAA surpassed the 1,000-member threshold, a figure that remained consistent over the next 15 years.
- In 2019, membership reached its highest level ever at 1,107. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, 19 schools have dropped out, and current membership is now 1,088.
The NCAA historical membership project will assist staff and the membership in their historical research pursuits. For questions about or assistance with the NCAA Historical Membership Database, please reach out to research@ncaa.org.
