The NCAA and The Associated Press have announced a three-year content partnership that makes AP the worldwide distributor of NCAA championship photography and creates the largest collection anywhere of collegiate sports photos.

Under the agreement, AP Images will serve as the NCAA’s exclusive photo licensing agent, including retail sales of archival photos, for all NCAA championships and events.

Rich Clarkson and Associates, LLC, which has served as the NCAA official photographer since 1994, and has covered the NCAA Men’s Final Four since 1952, will continue to provide the NCAA with photography services for all 88 NCAA championships for the next three years.  Clarkson is a former director of photography of the National Geographic Society and a longtime Sports Illustrated contract photographer. He formed his Denver-based multimedia company in 1987, producing original photography, workshops and the packaging of books, including one on the NCAA’s 100th anniversary.

AP Images, a commercial division of The Associated Press, is one of the world’s largest collections of historical and contemporary imagery, with millions of images and a variety of content partners, including Ebony and Jet, the international photojournalist collective VII, and NBC Universal, among others. The NCAA collection joins the others on a newly upgraded platform that provides AP customers a one-stop destination for licensing multimedia content.

The new agreement between the NCAA and AP Images will allow the NCAA to include NCAA photos in the AP Images archives, where they will then be made available for editorial and commercial use. In addition, the partnership will provide the NCAA with access to AP Images’ archive of NCAA photography.

Commercial use includes promotional use by NCAA corporate champions and partners or official licensees. Editorial use involves making available to media outlets images to enhance, tell or highlight a story.

The partnership with the NCAA will also include a consumer outlet at www.NCAA.com, where consumers will be able to purchase photos. NCAA championship photos will be available on APImages.com.

“In partnership with Rich Clarkson and Associates, the NCAA has compiled an archive of photos representing the greatest moments in NCAA championship history,” said Greg Weitekamp, NCAA director of broadcasting. “Combine the history of the NCAA photo archives with the depth of photos compiled by AP Images over the last 100 years, and the NCAA and the AP Images partnership will create the single-greatest collection of collegiate sports photos. In addition, with the reach AP Images has to the editorial world and extensive relationships formed with commercial agencies, the NCAA will enjoy a greater means of distributing its photos to further tell the story of the student-athlete.”