The NCAA News - News & Features

Association on the Net with NCAA Online services

With the sounds of a few computer keystrokes, the NCAA's official World Wide Web site was sent rocketing into cyberspace April 29 from its launch pad in Overland Park, Kansas.

After nearly a half year of development, including several months of design-oriented work, NCAA Online is up and running, and can be found at http://www.ncaa.org.

At the outset, the site will include general information about the Association, the text of The NCAA News, information about the NCAA Sports Library, and on-line versions of the NCAA staff directory and Guide for the College-Bound Student-Athlete. Visitors to the site will notice "under construction" signs posted for sections on statistics and championships, and the NCAA administrative database.

A link to a search engine for locating college and university home pages also is included in NCAA Online.

Sprint, an NCAA corporate partner, played an integral role in the development of the site. A link to Sprint's Web site is included in NCAA Online. Technical support for the site was provided by Marketing Associates International Interactive in Kansas City, Missouri.

NCAA Online was created with the NCAA membership in mind; however, others outside of the membership may find the site to be a valuable tool.

"We feel that the core audience of this Web site will be NCAA members," said Wallace I. Renfro, NCAA director of constituent communications and chair of the staff project team that supervised the development of NCAA Online. "We recognize that 30 million Internet users worldwide may access this site, so we've tried to include information of interest to that broader audience."

The on-line version of The NCAA News features news stories, Comment, Briefly in the News, NCAA News Digest, the NCAA Record, and The Market. The News content will be updated weekly, and new content should be available by the end of the day on Thursdays.

Although visitors will be unable to submit orders for publications listed in the NCAA Sports Library, they will be provided ordering information. Renfro said that allowing on-line ordering and purchasing is a goal he and the staff project team hope to reach.

The championships site will include records, previews of upcoming championships, dates-and-sites information and more. Once completed, the statistics page will offer information for baseball, men's and women's basketball, football, ice hockey, men's and women's lacrosse, women's softball, and women's volleyball.

"We're still reviewing the schedule for expansion," Renfro said.