Since 1999, Indianapolis has been home to the NCAA national office — a campus of three buildings that serves as an anchor for White River State Park, located on the west side of the city’s downtown.
The NCAA first resided in Chicago as it shared office space with the Big Ten Conference in a downtown hotel. In an effort to maintain impartiality within the membership, NCAA Executive Director Walter Byers moved the national headquarters to his hometown of Kansas City, Missouri, in 1952. The national office remained in its downtown Fairfax Building location until 1964, when it moved into the Midland Theatre. In 1973, it established residency at Shawnee Mission Parkway in Mission, Kansas, and then relocated 6 miles away to Overland Park, Kansas, in 1990.
As the NCAA began growing beyond the seams of its Overland Park office building, then-NCAA Executive Director Cedric Dempsey formed a task force in July 1996 to study moving its national headquarters. A month later, the NCAA announced 10 metropolitan areas were under consideration, including Atlanta; Charlotte, North Carolina; Dallas; Denver; Houston; Indianapolis; Kansas City; Orlando, Florida; Phoenix; and San Antonio. That December, Dallas, Denver, Indianapolis and Kansas City were named finalists, and on May 31, 1997, the NCAA formally announced Indianapolis would be its new home. Later that year, Indiana native Michael Graves was hired by the White River State Park Development Commission to design both the headquarters and the NCAA Hall of Champions museum.
In July 1999, the NCAA moved its operations and staff of 300 to its new four-story 140,000-square-foot facility, adjacent to the 35,000-square-foot NCAA Hall of Champions, which opened in March 2000.
Expansion was required once again in 2012, leading to a new four-story building and an addition of 6,800 square feet to the original building. The expansion added about 140,000 square feet in all to the campus. Upon the opening of the second building, the NCAA aptly named the original space the Dempsey Building and the new addition the Brand Building in honor of former NCAA President Myles Brand, who died in September 2009.
The Brand Building, which includes five meeting rooms and a ballroom that can comfortably fit the NCAA’s staff of approximately 500, is LEED certified and features a green roof, controlled lighting, irrigation cistern and a raised floor.
In addition to the buildings being named for Brand and Dempsey, rooms and spaces throughout the campus were named in honor of a number of other prominent figures.
Cedric Dempsey Building – Named for the NCAA’s third executive director, who led the membership from 1994 to 2002. Dempsey, whose title was changed to president in 1997, restructured the organization, addressed gambling in college sports, emphasized financial responsibility, negotiated significant television contracts for the NCAA Division I basketball tournaments, and facilitated the relocation of the national office from Overland Park, Kansas, to Indianapolis in 1999.
Palmer Pierce Ballroom – Named for the NCAA’s first president, who took office in 1906. Pierce was also a distinguished war veteran, having served in the Spanish-American War of 1898 and later as a commander of the 27th Infantry Division and the 54th Infantry Regiment during World War I.
Myles Brand Building – Named for the NCAA president who served from 2003 until his death in 2009. Brand had previously served as the 14th president of the University of Oregon and the 16th president of Indiana University. The first college president to lead the NCAA as its chief officer, Brand left a legacy of prioritizing the academic experience of the student-athlete.
Walter Byers Auditorium – Named for the NCAA’s first executive director. Byers expanded the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship bracket, negotiated television contracts and established an enforcement division during his tenure from 1951 to 1987.
Christine Grant Ballroom – Named for the first women’s athletics director at Iowa, who championed the fight for gender equity in athletics and was a founding member of the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women. Grant was recognized for her efforts as the fifth recipient of the NCAA President’s Gerald R. Ford Award in 2007.
James Frank Room – Named for a true college athletics visionary, who served as a student-athlete, a coach, educator, university president, 15-year commissioner of the Southwestern Athletic Conference and the first African-American membership president of the NCAA. During his 10 years as president of Lincoln (Missouri), Frank served a two-year term (1981-83) as the NCAA membership president under the leadership of Executive Director Walter Byers. Together, Frank and Byers integrated women’s athletics at the NCAA and established the Minority Opportunities and Interests Committee, a group devoted to giving diversity a greater voice in Association policymaking.
Althea Gibson Room – Named for the pioneer who helped pave the way for women and minorities in athletics, having become the first African-American athlete to win a Grand Slam professional tennis tournament, the 1956 French Championships singles event, and later became the first Black champion at Wimbledon. A winner of 56 national and international singles and doubles titles, including five Grand Slam singles titles, the Florida A&M graduate retired from tennis and later became the first African-American woman to join the Ladies Professional Golf Association tour in 1964. Gibson became the first woman to receive the Theodore Roosevelt Award – the NCAA’s most prestigious honor – in 1991.
Jesse Owens Room – Named for arguably the greatest track and field athlete of all time, who was a four-time gold medalist at the 1936 Olympic Games and an eight-time NCAA champion. Owens also set three world records and tied another in less than an hour at the 1935 track and field championships for the Western Conference, the precursor to the Big Ten. The feat is widely considered as the greatest 45 minutes in all of sport.
Theodore Roosevelt Room – Named for the former U.S. president, whose concern for the conduct of intercollegiate athletics, particularly in football, led to the formation of the NCAA in 1906. Roosevelt is also the namesake of the NCAA’s most prestigious award, the Theodore Roosevelt Award, which is commonly referred to as “The Teddy.”
Pat Summitt/John Wooden Room – Named for two coaching icons in collegiate basketball. Summitt earned 1,098 wins and eight NCAA championships as head coach of the Tennessee Lady Vols from 1974 to 2012, while Wooden registered 10 NCAA championships in 12 years, including a record seven in a row, as head coach for the UCLA Bruins.
Judith Sweet Room – Named for the NCAA’s first female membership president and first president from Division III, who later served as senior vice president for championships and education services at the national office. Sweet also served 24 years as the athletics director at UC San Diego. In 2006, Sweet was listed among the NCAA’s Centennial Anniversary 100 Most Influential Student-Athletes.
Charlotte West Room – Named for a pioneer and visionary for women’s athletics and Title IX, who also served as Southern Illinois athletics director for women for more than two decades. In addition, West served as president of the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, a member of the U.S. Olympic Committee and one of the first female members of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics. She also was the first recipient of the Honda Award, a national honor given for outstanding achievement in women’s collegiate athletics.
