At a time when the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) did not yet exist, such organizations attempted to bring order out of the chaos of the formative years of American intercollegiate sports.
When it was created, college sports were only loosely controlled by the institutions they represented; most schools followed the Yale model, in which programs were run by a combination of students, alumni, and boosters.
Rose Polytechnic (today Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology) became the eighth conference member later in the spring of 1890, too late for baseball but in time to participate in, and win, the first IIAA track meet, held that May.
[8][9] By the fall of 1891, five members (all but Hanover, Franklin, and Rose Polytechnic) were playing a four-game round robin in football, with the last game on Thanksgiving Day in Indianapolis.
A committee of the membership had to be assembled to adjudicate every protest, and to cover the cost, the IIAA began charging a fee to the losing party in a disputed contest.
To enable the state's two flagship universities to maintain a concurrent membership in the IIAA, in March 1900 the association adopted a new constitution committing its members to follow the same eligibility rules as the Western Conference.
[16] By spring 1896 DePauw had returned to active membership, raising the number of IIAA schools to ten, but Franklin, Hanover, Earlham, and Indiana State did not field baseball teams.
[21] It was an auspicious debut, as the Irish won the meet, albeit with Purdue protesting the results at the time,[22] and other participants subsequently accusing them of using professionals to win the event.
It was invented by James Naismith at the YMCA Training School (today Springfield College) in the winter of 1891–92, but by 1899-90 it had joined football, baseball, and track as a sport sponsored by the IIAA.
The agenda for the December 1903 meeting included officially dropping Hanover, Franklin, Earlham, and "the University of Indianapolis" (Butler) on the grounds that they "have taken little interest in the association and have not paid their dues.
Rose Polytechnic refused to play a scheduled home game against Wabash, "standing on their principles on the color line," and offered to pay the requisite IIAA forfeit fee.
[34] At the next annual meeting of the IIAA in December 1907, attempts to find a solution proved fruitless, as Notre Dame, for the sake of getting games with Western Conference teams, aligned with Indiana and Purdue on the freshman rule.
A disappointed sportswriter summed it up: "Consequently, there will be no meetings between [Western] conference and non-conference schools in Indiana for a long time, and state titles in all branches of college athletics are ended.
Nevertheless, the IIAA continued to exist, though mostly to preserve the annual track meet as a showcase for the state's emerging "big three" of athletics, Notre Dame plus Indiana and Purdue.
Any other school not previously expelled from the association was welcome to send a team to the meet, as long as the roster conformed to Western Conference rules, including the ban on freshmen.
Any of the smaller current or former members of the IIAA could also continue to schedule the "big three" in football, baseball, or basketball, as long as they honored the freshman rule in those contests.