The Sanity Code (officially the Principles for the Conduct of Intercollegiate Athletics) was a set of rules adopted by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in 1948 to address student financial aid. The code barred athletes at member institutions from receiving any form of financial aid that was not solely needs-based and also required them to meet the same academic standards as all non-athlete students.
Since the NCAA's founding in 1906, it has specified that college sports should be purely amateur. Regulation and enforcement, however, were left to its member institutions. Several universities and athletic conferences, such as the Southeastern Conference, allowed for the use of athletic scholarships, a move that was opposed by universities and conferences in the Northern and Western United States, such as the Pacific Coast Conference. A 1946 conference was called to address this rift, with the Sanity Code being the result. Following several years of discussion and further voting, it was officially incorporated into the NCAA's constitution in January 1948. By 1949, the NCAA's compliance committee found seven institutions, primarily from the South, as being in violation of the code and recommended that they be expelled from the NCAA. However, at the 1950 convention, despite a majority of institutions voting for expulsion, the required two-thirds majority was not reached and the institutions, despite their code violations, remained in the association. Following the vote, many in the NCAA doubted that the code could ever be enforced, and at the 1951 convention, members voted to remove the code.
The code is considered the first attempt by the NCAA to act as a rules-enforcement organization, and according to economist Andrew Zimbalist, several economists have pointed to the code as the beginning of the NCAA's foray into cartelization. Following the code's repeal, the NCAA appointed Walter Byers as the association's initial full-time executive director and created a committee to oversee rules enforcement. In 1956, the NCAA reversed its position on scholarships and, for the first time, authorized the granting of financial aid for student athletes solely for athletic ability.
Background
In 1906, the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (renamed in 1910 to the National Collegiate Athletic Association, NCAA) was established by administrators of several American universities to oversee college sports. In the association's 1906 bylaws, they specified that college athletics would solely consist of amateur sports. They defined an amateur as "one who participates in competitive physical sports only for the pleasure, and the physical, mental, moral and social benefits derived therefrom" in 1916. However, universities that were part of the NCAA were allowed to grant athletes needs-based financial aid, unrelated to athletics. The NCAA left enforcement of its amateurism policy up to its member universities, leading to several instance of collegiate athletes violating this policy throughout the first half of the 20th century. In 1929, the Carnegie Corporation of New York published a report alleging widespread recruiting and financial assistance in college football, stating that what was supposed to be an amateur sport contained elements of "professionalism". Two years later, Edward K. Hall, the chair of the NCAA's football rules committee gave a speech titled "A Return to Sanity", where he urged cooperative action from association members against the growing number of universities that were engaging in non-amateur activities. A 1935 survey of NCAA member institutions revealed that only about 36 percent of the association's members were fully complying with the pure amateurism rules, with a large percentage calling the rules "impossible" to comply with. Additionally, several athletic conferences by that time were allowing athletic scholarships, including the Southeastern Conference (SEC), with several more considering allowing them. In 1941, in a move to address the shortcomings of the self-enforcement policy, the NCAA adopted a new constitution that allowed for member institutions to be expelled from the association if they violated the rules.
The issue of amateurism became more evident immediately following World War II as many universities that had shuttered their athletics programs during the war revived them and college recruiting efforts focused on athletes who had served in the military. In 1946, sportswriter Francis Wallace reported extensively on these recruitment efforts from boosters, including generous financial offers made to high-profile American football athletes such as Bill DeCorrevont, Shorty McWilliams, and Buddy Young. In the case of McWilliams, Wallace reported that an unnamed university had offered him $15,000 (), the use of a car, and a job with a monthly salary of $300 ($ in ). Universities and conferences disagreed on a standard approach to athlete compensation. Conferences in the Southern United States, such as the Missouri Valley Conference, the SEC, the Southern Conference (SoCon), and the Southwest Conference (SWC), all favored the awarding of athletic scholarships. Meanwhile, the Big Nine Conference (later known as the Big Ten Conference), the Pacific Coast Conference (PCC), and many independent schools in the Eastern United States (including later members of the Ivy League) were opposed. At the time, both the Big Nine and the PCC had conference rules prohibiting athletic scholarships.
The Sanity Code From July 22–23, 1946, the NCAA, led by NCAA President Karl Leib, held a conference in Chicago to address issues within college athletics, particularly with recruiting. At the time, individual athletic conferences were considered the primary regulatory bodies in college sports, and as a result, this special meeting was considered a "Conference of Conferences", attracting representatives of 20 different conferences. During the meeting, the association developed a set of "Principles for the Conduct of Intercollegiate Athletics". Initially nicknamed the "Purity Code", "Sanity Code" was eventually adopted as a less pejorative alternative, becoming the common nickname for the principles.
Much of the Sanity Code reiterated existing amateurism standards. The code stated that universities could only offer athletes scholarships that were needs-based and could not rescind scholarships if the recipient ceased to be a member of their athletics program. Additionally, university officials were barred from recruiting with financial incentives, and student athletes were required to meet the same academic standards as non-athletes. At the Chicago conference, a rule was discussed that would have barred off-campus recruiting of athletes, though it was ultimately voted down. To oversee enforcement, the NCAA would create two committees: the Fact Finding Committee and the Constitutional Compliance Committee. The former would investigate instances of code violation, while the latter would serve as arbiters, granted the power to interpret the code and assess whether an infraction had occurred. The only punishment stipulated by the code was expulsion from the NCAA, which could only be performed by a two-thirds vote of NCAA member institutions present at a convention. According to economist Andrew Zimbalist, the code was considered a compromise between the southern conferences and the future members of the Ivy League.
Following the Chicago convention, copies of the code were distributed to over 400 universities for review. About six months later, at the NCAA general convention held in New York City on January 8, 1947, representatives again met to formally vote on the draft proposals. The proposals were provisionally adopted at that time, and it was scheduled that a vote on adding the proposals to the constitution would be carried out during the 1948 general conference. The Big Nine and the PCC were highly supportive of the proposals, while representatives from several southern conferences were opposed. Among universities within the SEC, the president of Louisiana State University advocated for fellow members to abide only by conference rules and regulations and not those imposed by the NCAA, while the president of the University of Kentucky floated the idea of leaving the NCAA altogether while still maintaining its conference membership. Albert D. Kirwan, an administrator at Kentucky, was considered a major critic of the code during this time, alongside Curley Byrd, the president of the University of Maryland, College Park. Both Kirwan and Byrd had previously served as head coaches for their respective universities' football programs before becoming academic administrators. Despite the opposition, the Sanity Code was approved almost unanimously at the 1948 general convention, coming into effect on January 10.
Over the course of 1948, the compliance committee, granted a budget of $5,000 ($ in ) was set up to investigate potential noncompliance issues with the code. In June of that year, the PCC levied fines against several members for violations of the code, amounting to between $120 and $5,500 ($ and $ in ). Overall though, there were very few complaints from NCAA member institutions regarding the code. However, in May 1949, representatives from the SEC, SoCon, and SWC met and came to an agreement that the code was too restrictive in its financial aid and that scholarships should include assistance other than just tuition, including room and board, food, laundry, and books. The three conferences also discussed possibly leaving the NCAA. Representatives from southern institutions also complained that the code favored elite universities, primarily from the northern and eastern United States, arguing in part that those universities had a wealthier alumni base that could more easily pay athletes in secret. According to sportswriter Kenneth Shropshire, the code led to the widespread proliferation of "under-the-table scholarships or other payments based on athletic abilities".
Several universities refused to comply with the code, with recruiting and scholarship practices remaining unchanged as administrators awaited a test case for the new rules. The University of Virginia openly called the code unenforceable, and in mid-1949, university president Colgate Darden, with the support of the university's governing board, announced that the university would leave the NCAA unless the code were amended to allow for athletic scholarships. The board voted to approve these measures on July 21 and promptly notified the NCAA. The university announced that 24 football players had received financial aid from an alumni association that helped cover part or all of their tuition.
The "Seven Sinners" In 1949, the compliance committee stated that they were looking to take possible action against 20 institutions that had been found to be in violation of the code, in addition to 19 other institutions that were in possible violation. Of the 20, 13 were able to return to good standing with the committee. Before the 1950 general convention, the committee announced that they would be recommending the seven universities that had not changed their practices for an expulsion vote. These institutions, nicknamed the "Sinful Seven" or the "Seven Sinners", were: the Augustinian College of Villanova, Boston College, The Citadel, the University of Maryland, College Park, the University of Virginia, the Virginia Military Institute, and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute. Specifically, the committee charged that these institutions were offering athletic scholarships to athletes regardless of their financial status. Of these seven, all were southern universities except for Boston College and Villanova, which were Catholic universities in the Northern United States.