The NCAA on Monday pulled the plug on its Scholarly Colloquium, canceling financial support for future academic conferences and announcing plans to wind down its investment in the forum’s scholarly journal, following a sometimes-contentious six-year run.

The news—delivered by James L. Isch, the NCAA’s chief operating officer—came during a meeting of the colloquium’s Executive Board on Monday night, just hours before this year’s colloquium was set to begin, on Tuesday morning.

Citing poor attendance at the annual conference, a lack of profitability of the journal, and a failure to influence public policy, Mr. Isch said the NCAA planned to redirect its investment into “targeted research” that its member colleges wanted, according to academic leaders present at the meeting.

Scholars saw the move as a pretext for NCAA officials’ objections to the critical examination of…

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