The NCAA already has its “One Shining Moment,” the inspirational theme played after every Final Four, but now the Association has “25 Defining Moments” that will be presented throughout its Centennial year.

Whereas “One Shining Moment” describes a four-week road to the Final Four, the NCAA’s “25 Defining Moments” charts the 100-year course of intercollegiate athletics. The effort is part of the NCAA Centennial celebration and is designed to call attention to benchmarks in NCAA history that have helped make the Association what it is today. ESPN will produce and air the 25 moments as 30-second “vignettes” during programming throughout 2006.

Among the 25 moments are the more obvious highlights such as the founding of the NCAA, the first Final Four, the agreement to sponsor women’s championships and the hiring of Walter Byers as the Association’s first CEO.

While those “moments” define what the NCAA is, the list also includes moments that reflect what the NCAA is about: excellence in competition, character and community. Those attributes are exemplified by Iowa State University’s Cael Sanderson, the most decorated and accomplished wrestler in collegiate history; by the Texas Western College basketball team that featured five black starters for the first time in a championship game; and by Ohio State University’s Jesse Owens, who broke four world records at the 1935 Big Ten Conference track championships.

But as with any ranking, boiling 100 years of history down to the top 25 moments was a daunting task. NCAA member institutions submitted nominations, and a committee chaired by Alfreeda Goff of the Horizon League made the final selections.

Goff had each committee member submit independent rankings of the membership nominations, then those that gained consensus as top picks were set aside while debate and discussion settled the remaining choices.

“The challenge, as with any sports committee trying to fill a bracket, is that while you usually agree on the top and bottom candidates, the middle ones are tough,” said Goff, a senior associate commissioner at the Horizon League.

The group agreed on those “middle ones” with the help of a partner committee working on a Centennial ranking of its own. University of Indianapolis Athletics Director Sue Willey chaired a group selecting the NCAA’s 100 Most Influential Student-Athletes, which ESPN will produce as two one-hour shows. In essence, the two groups swapped lists and provided feedback, which validated some of the more obvious choices and prompted consideration of others that the respective committees hadn’t thought about.

Goff’s group also was able to include more moments by combining several that involved similar events or characteristics. For example, “NCAA Presidential Firsts” includes groundbreakers Palmer Pierce (first membership president), James Frank (first black president) and Judy Sweet (first female president). Similarly, the hiring of Walter Byers as the Association’s first executive director also references subsequent CEOs Richard Schultz, Cedric Dempsey and Myles Brand.

“Several of the defining moments were so similar that we were able to combine those as one, indicating in the moment how they were related or how they affected each other as a group,” Goff said. “In effect, that allowed for us to include some additional defining moments without going over what we considered to be the very best or maximum that we would want.”

Goff said she is pleased with the overall selections and that she believes the package truly reflects events that had a significant impact on the NCAA. Even the more individual accomplishments, she said, such as Boston College quarterback Doug Flutie’s “Hail Mary” touchdown pass or University of California, Los Angeles, pitcher Keira Goerl’s no-hitter in the Women’s College World Series championship game, belong as “defining” moments.

“We did discuss whether those really were defining moments or simply an athletics event,” Goff said. “We realized they were both. For one, those moments did occur in an NCAA event, so they are special moments in the history of the NCAA. Two, they do define what we’re about, which is that we’re here for the student-athlete experience — the embodiment of athletics, character and community service.

“We felt those cases were defining moments because they had what we thought was a major impact on the history of sports as they are governed by the NCAA.”

While the inclusion of individual or team accomplishments may prompt critics to cite events that were left out, Goff hopes people see beyond the details and pick up the greater message.

“This was our first try at this, and we worked hard with the information we were provided,” she said. “This should prompt member institutions to feel proud of our collective accomplishments over time. And I also want the general public to understand the scope of intercollegiate athletics’ effect on young people — not only the student-athletes who appear on our television screens during prime-time games, but also the hundreds of thousands of others who choose athletics to be part of their educational experience. I want young kids from all backgrounds to understand the history and excitement the NCAA has generated over time, and that they can be part of our future defining moments.”

Defining moments series to appear in The NCAA News

For the remaining 25 issues in 2006, The NCAA News will devote page 5 to one of the 25 defining moments in NCAA history. The sport-specific “Focus” page will resume in 2007.

25 Defining Moments

A committee selected the following events as the top moments that best represent the NCAA’s 100-year history. The committee did not rank the events.

• Ohio State’s Jesse Owens breaks four world records at the 1935 Big Ten Conference track championships.

• The 1979 Final Four championship game, featuring Earvin “Magic” Johnson from Michigan State University and Larry Bird from Indiana State University, earns the highest TV rating (24.1) of any title game before or since.

• Delegates at the 75th annual Convention in 1981 adopt a governance plan to include women’s athletics programs and services within the NCAA structure.

• The NCAA and CBS Sports in 1999 reach an 11-year, $6 billion agreement for television, radio, Internet, corporate marketing, licensing, publishing, home video and special-event rights.

• Simpson wrestler Nick Ackerman, who does not have the use of his legs, wins the championship match in the 174-pound class at the 2001 Division III Wrestling Championships.

• The NCAA is founded in 1906 after a warning from President Theodore Roosevelt to either reform or risk the abolition of football.

• The first men’s basketball championship is held at Northwestern on March 27, 1939.

• The UCLA men’s basketball team wins a seventh straight NCAA title in 1973.

• Boston College quarterback Doug Flutie’s “Hail Mary” touchdown pass to Gerard Phelan lifts the Eagles over Miami (Florida) in 1984.

• Iowa State wrestler Cael Sanderson completes his four-year undefeated collegiate career by winning the championship match in the 197-pound class at the 2002 Division I Wrestling Championships.

• The first NCAA championship is held June 17-18, 1921, at Chicago when student-athletes from 62 colleges and universities compete in track and field.

• Syracuse running back Ernie Davis becomes the first black athlete to win the Heisman Trophy.

• Loyola (Illinois) faces Mississippi State in a 1963 men’s basketball tournament regional semifinal. Mississippi State, an all-white team, sneaks out of town in the middle of the night despite protests from the governor and state police of Mississippi to play a Loyola team that features four black starters. Mississippi State overcame an unwritten Mississippi rule against playing integrated teams with a cloak-and-dagger flight to the North just one step ahead of a court injunction. Loyola beats Mississippi State and goes on to win the title.

• On June 19, 1965, UCLA senior Arthur Ashe wins the 1965 NCAA singles and doubles titles and leads the Bruins to a team championship.

• On March 19, 1966, Texas Western and its five African-American starters defeat Kentucky, 72-65.

• In 2003, North Carolina wins the NCAA Division I Women’s Soccer Championship for the 18th time (in the past 23 seasons) while finishing the season undefeated at 27-0.

• Tennessee women’s basketball coach Pat Summitt leads her Lady Vols past Purdue in the 2005 NCAA tournament to become the all-time winningest coach in NCAA basketball history.

• Walter Byers is named as the Association’s first executive director in 1951. A national headquarters is established in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1952. Richard Schultz succeeds Byers after his retirement in 1987. Cedric Dempsey becomes the Association’s third CEO in 1994, followed by Myles Brand in 2003.

•  In what many believe is the greatest Cinderella story in college basketball, North Carolina State’s Lorenzo Charles dunks the ball as time expires in the 1983 championship game to lead the Wolfpack to a 54-52 win over heavily favored Houston.

•  Presidential firsts: Palmer Pierce becomes the Association’s first president, holding office from 1906 to 1913 and from 1917 to 1929. On January 12, 1981, James Frank of Lincoln (Missouri) becomes the first black and the first college president elected to serve as president of the NCAA. On January 10, 1991, Judy Sweet becomes the first female to serve as NCAA president.

• North Dakota State wins a fourth straight Division II Women’s Basketball Championship in 1996. The four-year run includes a perfect season in 1994-95 and a 49-game winning streak, one of the longest in NCAA history.

•  Marymount basketball student-athlete Corinne Carson becomes one of the first known collegiate athletes to return to the sport after a liver transplant. She is named the WBCA National Player of the Year in Division III for 1997.

• UCLA Pitcher Keira Goerl throws a nine-inning no-hitter in the 2003 NCAA Division I Softball Championship game.

•  Oklahoma football student-athlete Prentice Gautt becomes the first Black to play for a member institution in the Jim Crow states of the South and Southwest. Gautt later becomes the NCAA’s secretary-treasurer in 1994.

• On March 15, 1973, Dacia Schileru, a Wayne State (Michigan) diver, becomes the first female to compete in an NCAA championship, entering the College Division Swimming and Diving Championships.