Sanity Code

The Sanity Code (officially the Principles for the Conduct of Intercollegiate Athletics) was a set of rules formally adopted by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in 1948 to address student financial aid. The code barred athletes at member institutions from receiving any form of financial aid that was not solely needs-based and also required them to meet the same academic standards as all non-athlete students. It was revoked in 1951.

Since the NCAA's founding in 1906, they have specified that college sports should be purely amateur but left regulation and enforcement of this to its member institutions. In the Southern United States, several universities and athletic conferences, such as the Southeastern Conference, allowed for the use of athletic scholarships, a move that was opposed by universities and conferences in the Northern and Western United States, such as the Pacific Coast Conference. A 1946 conference was called to address this rift, with the Sanity Code being the result. Following several years of discussion and further voting, it was officially incorporated into the NCAA's constitution in January 1948. By 1949, the NCAA's compliance committee found seven institutions, primarily from the South, as being in violation of the code and recommended that they be expelled from the NCAA. However, at the 1950 convention, despite a majority of institutions voting for expulsion, the required two-thirds majority was not reached and the institutions, despite their code violations, remained in the association. Following the vote, many in the NCAA doubted that the code could ever be enforced, and at the 1951 convention, members voted to remove the code.

The code is considered the first attempt by the NCAA to act as a rules-enforcement organization, and according to economist Andrew Zimbalist, several economists have pointed to the code as the NCAA's first foray into cartelization. Following the code's repeal, the NCAA appointed Walter Byers as the association's first full-time executive director and created a committee to oversee rules enforcement. In 1956, the NCAA reversed its position on scholarships and, for the first time, authorized the granting of financial aid for student athletes solely for athletic ability.