The Intercollegiate Hockey Association was a loose collection of ice hockey programs from schools in the Northeastern United States. Each college involved would play every other team at least once during the season, and the team with the best record would be declared the champion. As this was the only championship for college hockey at the time, the victor served as the de facto National Champion. The IHA was called both the Intercollegiate Hockey Association and the Intercollegiate Hockey League during its existence. It is referred to here as the IHA to distinguish from the later Intercollegiate Hockey League. Although all of the IHA member colleges later became members of the Ivy League, there was never a time when they were all in the IHA at once.

The IHA began in February 1898 while the season was in progress. Brown, Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale agreed to form the league after some of their intercollegiate games had already been played. However, all of the matches played that season were counted for the inaugural championship (even those played prior to the founding of the IHA). Brown was the initial victor, finishing with an undefeated record against the other three teams.

After the first full season of play, the league started holding a championship series at the end of the season for the two best teams. Yale won the first three series. The series was eventually reduced to a single game before being abandoned altogether after 1904. In the 1904–05 season, the league champion returned to being the team with the best record against IHA opponents.

The IHA expanded to include other future Ivy League schools like Harvard and Princeton, then welcomed Dartmouth after Brown suspended its program in 1906. At the same meeting where Dartmouth was admitted, the committee also banned freshmen from participating on varsity teams. Cornell joined the league a few years later.

In 1911, restrictions imposed by Harvard faculty forced the college to resign from the league. The following year, both Columbia and Yale left, dropping membership back to just three teams. The league continued until the end of the year before disbanding.