If it is true that a lot can be learned about an organization by studying its leadership, then it should be no surprise that the NCAA has enjoyed a century of success.

Among the procession of individuals who have served the Association in leadership roles, three in particular stand out: Palmer E. Pierce, the NCAA’s first president; James Frank, the Association’s first African-American president and the first college president to preside over the Association; and Judith M. Sweet, the NCAA’s first female president.

All three were identified collectively as “presidential firsts” in the NCAA’s Top 25 Defining Moments.

It is important to note that the structure of the NCAA over which Pierce, Frank and Sweet presided was quite different than it is today. Before the NCAA implemented a federated governance structure in 1997, the NCAA president was a membership position. The national office was led by an executive director, but that position was re-titled “president” to accommodate the new representative structure in which division-specific groups of college and university presidents and chancellors implemented the Association’s agenda.

Pierce, Frank and Sweet each guided the NCAA through periods of significant change, growth and success. Pierce, an 1891 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, played a key role in the NCAA’s foundation and early years. As Army’s representative to the December 28, 1905, meeting of 62 colleges and universities seeking a way to keep college football alive, Pierce helped persuade delegates to create a formal organization — at that time called the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States. The IAAUS eventually changed its name to the National Collegiate Athletic Association in 1910.

Pierce guided the NCAA for nearly two decades — from 1906 to 1913 and from 1917 to 1930. His tenure was interrupted by World War I, in which he commanded a brigade of the Third Army Corps and ultimately earned a promotion to brigadier general by the conflict’s end.

According to Joseph N. Crowley’s “In the Arena: The NCAA’s First Century,” Pierce viewed the organization as an educational, not regulatory, entity. From the beginning, it was clear he believed deeply in the potential of the NCAA.

In his address to the second annual gathering of the IAAUS in 1907, Pierce said, “In a word, this is a league of educated gentlemen who are trying to exercise a wise control over college athletics, believing that the good effect will react on every playground of every schoolhouse of the United States. I firmly believe it will finally dominate the college athletic world. It stands for purity, for rational control, for fair play. As its aims and methods become better understood, its strength will grow until its influence will become truly national.”

Football drove the creation of the organization, and Pierce and the fledgling IAAUS dedicated time and attention to the game. However, Pierce was concerned about baseball, too, which was plagued by players who were competing with professional and semiprofessional leagues (particularly in the summer) as a way of earning money, then appearing on college and universities rosters during the academic year. Pierce also focused fiercely on increasing the membership of the newly established NCAA.

“We are not and cannot be satisfied until all institutions of collegiate rank and of athletic importance have joined in the organized movement for sane control of collegiate athletic sports,” Pierce said at the third annual Convention.

It was under Pierce’s leadership that the NCAA began sponsoring its first championships in track and field (1921), swimming (1924) and wrestling (1928). Other causes Pierce championed during his tenure included faculty control over athletics, the incorporation of athletics into the academic structure and the need for a central office for the Association.

Frankly speaking

Just over 50 years after Pierce relinquished the position of president, the Association named James Frank to the post in 1981. Frank, who had planned to pursue a career as an electrician before earning an athletics scholarship to Lincoln University (Missouri), already had built a familiarity and trust among the membership. His involvement with the NCAA had begun six years earlier when he joined the NCAA Council at the invitation of then secretary-treasurer Stan Marshall.

Frank went on to spend two years as secretary-treasurer before becoming the Association’s membership leader. While he said there was no particular pressure on him to do anything other than a good job, Frank was well aware that he was not only the first college president to serve as president of the NCAA, but he also was the Association’s first African-American leader. Some publications touted that as an issue, Frank said, but it wasn’t a factor with the membership.

Frank, who spent 10 years as president at Lincoln, completed his term as the Association’s president against a backdrop of significant, history-making change. It was under his leadership in fact that the NCAA agreed to sponsor women’s championships.

Frank called it a contentious issue among the membership, but said the NCAA Council was solidly behind the inclusion of women.

“In those days, you had to get the membership to vote. It was the responsibility of the executive director and the NCAA leadership to convince the membership that this was the thing to do,” Frank said.

But that wasn’t the only contentious issue to punctuate Frank’s presidential tenure. In 1984, a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision led to an increase in the number of times football teams could appear on television. The suit, brought by the University of Georgia and the University of Oklahoma, argued that the NCAA’s control of football on television violated the Sherman Antitrust Act and that, as a result, the schools were losing revenue.

Frank, who testified in court during the legal proceedings, said the lawsuit split the membership and the decision completely changed the college athletics landscape.

Gender groundbreaker

A decade later, it was Sweet, then director of athletics at the University of California, San Diego, who again changed the landscape as the first female to be elected president of the NCAA.

“What I was most aware of was the tremendous opportunity — and the tremendous responsibility. I was often asked what it was like or how I felt about being the first female to serve as president of the NCAA and my response was an easy one: Being the first was just a matter of timing. The important thing is that I’m not the last,” Sweet said. “I was fully aware that if I was not successful, it would  make it easy to say that’s why women shouldn’t be put in these positions.”

Like Frank, Sweet was familiar to the membership. In addition to her responsibilities as athletics director, she also had been vice president for Division III and the NCAA’s first female secretary-treasurer. When she was chosen as president in 1991, she came in expecting to make a difference and did so in a number of areas, such as increasing the Association’s commitment to providing opportunities for women and ethnic minorities. She also helped usher in an era of Association history that included student-athletes in the decision-making process.

“Part of my goal was to ensure that student-athletes had a voice,” said Sweet, who also noted that during the time of her administration, presidential involvement within the NCAA was growing. “That involvement really led the way for the structure we currently have in place with presidents and chancellors being the final authority, and that’s the way it should be.”

On a lighter note, but one that had far-reaching effects, it also was during Sweet’s time as president that the membership moved from paddles to electronic voting at the annual Convention. “I think the membership was extremely grateful for that,” she said. “I didn’t have any responsibility for it, but I was quite pleased that it changed.”

In her role as secretary-treasurer, Sweet was instrumental in designing the revenue-distribution plan that is for the most part still in place today. Previously, the plan was based entirely on how far an institution’s team advanced in the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship.