Category Archives: College executive

Henry MacCracken (College executive. Born, Oxford, OH, September 28, 1840; died, New York, NY, December 24, 1918.) As Vice Chancellor (1885-91) and Chancellor (1891-1910) of New York University, Henry Mitchell MacCracken was an enthusiastic supporter of intercollegiate athletics. He persuaded N.Y.U. alumni from his native Ohio to contribute sufficient funds to build athletic facilities for Violets teams in The Bronx (which facilities were then named Ohio Field) and, in 1906, in concert with Army captain Palmer E. Pierce of the U.S.M.A., led the formation of a group called the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States. This organization was created to press for changes in college football rules after a wave of violence and deaths racked the sport and threatened its extinction. Several colleges (including Columbia) dropped football, others threatened to do so, and President Theodore Roosevelt added his voice to the national outcry against the violence when (on Jan. 12, 1906) the new I.A.A.U.S. met with the older American Football Rules Committee headed by Yale’s venerable Walter Camp. Out of this meeting emerged a new organization which in 1913 became known as the National Collegiate Athletic Association.