The official founding of the Indiana Intercollegiate Conference occurred at a meeting held on December 9, 1922, at the Claypool Hotel in Indianapolis.
The three largest member institutions—Indiana, Purdue, and Notre Dame—were key to its creation, even though they did not participate in IIC team sports once conference standings were kept.
At the time, during the formative years of college athletics, the NCAA left questions of student-athlete eligibility to the conferences and to individual schools.
But all three rounded out their schedules with games against smaller Indiana colleges, none of which was subject to the same eligibility standards, in particular the Western Conference's ban on freshmen participating in varsity contests.
The conference was created largely through the work of Purdue athletic director Nelson A. Kellogg, who led several organizing meetings during the first half of 1922.
At another meeting the following month, again at Purdue, Kellogg and Rockne joined William M. Blanchard of DePauw and representatives from Butler and Wabash in drafting a constitution and eligibility standards.
Football, cross country, and tennis were added in 1923–24, and the first conference golf championship was held at the end of the 1924–25 school year.
The following year, Rockne's team, led by the Four Horsemen, shut out their only IIC opponent (Wabash) en route to an undefeated national championship season, and were once again hailed as "the Indiana conference champion.
"[17] Notre Dame never scheduled an IIC football opponent again, making its further eligibility for conference championships a moot point.
Without the Fighting Irish, the 1925 season featured four undefeated teams and no clear champion, while also foreshadowing the IIC's fundamental incoherence as a conference: Central Normal joined Evansville in going unbeaten in IIC play, each without playing another winning team, while Butler and Wabash were also undefeated (tying each other) with their only non-conference losses coming against Big Ten squads.
[19] The last great IIC team of the pre-tournament era, Tony Hinkle's 1928-29 Butler squad, went 17-2 and was awarded the John J. McDevitt Trophy, emblematic of the national championship.
By 1950, when Indiana State won the NAIB title, teams from nine IIC member institutions had made a total of 17 appearances in the tournament over 13 seasons.
They were held annually on consecutive weekends in May, starting in 1923 and continuing until 1950, when "Big State" was cancelled in favor of a three-way meet between Indiana, Purdue, and Notre Dame.
[21] The IIC eventually applied the same model to cross country, tennis, and golf, crowning separate "big" and "little" champions in those sports as well.
It became clear right away that the rule posed a serious burden to the conference's smaller members and an obstacle to other small colleges joining the league.
At the second annual meeting of the IIC, in December 1923, a proposal to allow members with small enrollments to petition to use freshmen in varsity contests passed by a vote of 16–1.
Finally, after the Great Depression caused a severe drop in enrollment at most Indiana private colleges, a 1933 amendment to the IIC constitution made the freshman exception automatic for any member with fewer than 350 male students.
[25] In 1930 DePauw and Wabash joined the Buckeye Athletic Association, feeling (not for the last time) that they had more in common with the selective private colleges of Ohio.
While it is reasonably accurate to say that the Indiana Intercollegiate Conference ceased to exist in 1950 (upon the creation of the ICC, in the wake of the formation of the HCC), it faded away gradually and had no exact date of death.
The sports pages often referred to the IIC football and basketball titles listed below as "mythical championships," because they were decided by winning percentage among teams that, in some cases, had played dramatically different numbers of league contests.
+ a tri-meet of Indiana, Purdue, and Notre Dame was held instead of the 1950 "Big State" NOTE: the conference champions and co-champions indicated in the standings below reflect the consensus of sportswriters in the year in question, and/or titles claimed by the institutions in their own athletics records.