“Is College Tennis In Trouble?” with ITA CEO Dave Mullins

Maybe explain to me, is it the NCAA and the ITA? Obviously you guys.

I always had...

You know, you're growing up, it's all, all you hear is the NCAA.

You never heard of the ITA.

Mm-mm.

Yeah.

So may- maybe what exactly is the NCAA? You say NCAA there, but as far as I know-

Yeah

... is it the N- is it you're referring to the same thing?

The NCAA, um, so they are the ultimate governing body of college athletics in America.

And so pretty much every institution, um, across the country that has an athletic department that sponsors sports is a member of the NCAA or the NAIA.

NAIA is much, much smaller.

Um, so the NCAA's made up basically of all these institutions, all the presidents of these institutions are the ultimate decision makers.

Now obviously they have a big staff, and many people have heard of, of the NCAA basketball tournament with March Madness.

It's a billion-dollar [laughs] annual event basically that brings in most of the money, and then that goes out and supports a number of things that the NCAA do and, and I don't wanna sell them short by any means.

There's a lot going on there.

But their, one of their main, uh, purposes is the NCAA rule book, which is very thick and, and governs, uh, college athletics and different sports have, have carve outs, but they also run, I think, over 90 championships.

So you think of the...

I think there's maybe 38 to 40 different NCAA sports, so they run championships for all of those across all three divisions.

Um, so you can imagine that that takes up a lot of their bandwidth as well.

Nice.

So, so your job is to take care of the tennis part on it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we, we don't...

Maybe explain to me, is it the NCAA and the ITA? Obviously you guys.

I always had...

You know, you're growing up, it's all, all you hear is the NCAA.

You never heard of the ITA.

Mm-mm.

Yeah.

So may- maybe what exactly is the NCAA? You say NCAA there, but as far as I know-

Yeah

... is it the N- is it you're referring to the same thing?

The NCAA, um, so they are the ultimate governing body of college athletics in America.

And so pretty much every institution, um, across the country that has an athletic department that sponsors sports is a member of the NCAA or the NAIA.

NAIA is much, much smaller.

Um, so the NCAA's made up basically of all these institutions, all the presidents of these institutions are the ultimate decision makers.

Now obviously they have a big staff, and many people have heard of, of the NCAA basketball tournament with March Madness.

It's a billion-dollar [laughs] annual event basically that brings in most of the money, and then that goes out and supports a number of things that the NCAA do and, and I don't wanna sell them short by any means.

There's a lot going on there.

But their, one of their main, uh, purposes is the NCAA rule book, which is very thick and, and governs, uh, college athletics and different sports have, have carve outs, but they also run, I think, over 90 championships.

So you think of the...

I think there's maybe 38 to 40 different NCAA sports, so they run championships for all of those across all three divisions.

Um, so you can imagine that that takes up a lot of their bandwidth as well.

Nice.

So, so your job is to take care of the tennis part on it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we, we don't...