The NCAA Men's Outdoor Track and Field Championship is an annual collegiate outdoor track and field competition for men organised by the National Collegiate Athletic Association. It has three divisions: Division I, II, and III. Athlete's individual performances earn points for their institution and the team with the most points receives the NCAA team title in track and field. A separate NCAA women's competition is also held.
The first edition of the championship was held in 1921 and the competition expanded to two divisions in 1963, then three divisions in 1974. Teams and their athletes must abide by NCAA rules in order to compete – the Arkansas Razorbacks were stripped of their 2004 and 2005 titles for recruitment violations, while Florida State University lost its 2007 NCAA Division I title because one of its athletes had not met the academic requirements.
Famous quotes containing the words men, outdoor, track and/or field:
“To say of men that they are bad is to say they are worse than we think we are, or worse than the ideal man whose image we have built up on the basis of a certain few.”
—Jean Rostand (1894–1977)
“Close to the academy in this town they have erected a sort of gallows for the pupils to practice on. I thought that they might as well hang at once all who need to go through such exercises in so new a country, where there is nothing to hinder their living an outdoor life. Better omit Blair, and take the air.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements, and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping. We see our past achievements as the end result of a clean forward thrust, and our present difficulties as signs of decline and decay.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“When white men were willing to put their own offspring in the kitchen and corn field and allowed them to be sold into bondage as slaves and degraded them as another man’s slave, the retribution of wrath was hanging over this country and the South paid penance in four years of bloody war.”
—Rebecca Latimer Felton (1835–1930)