NYU Violets is the nickname of the sports teams and other competitive teams at New York University. The school colors are purple and white. Although officially known as the Violets, the school mascot is a bobcat. The Violets compete as a member of NCAA Division III in the University Athletic Association conference. The university sponsors 23 varsity sports, as well as club teams and intramural sports.

For more than a century, NYU athletes have worn violet and white colors in competition, which is the root of the nickname Violets. In the 1980s, after briefly using a student dressed as a violet for a mascot, the school instead adopted the bobcat as its mascot, from the abbreviation then being used by NYU's Bobst Library computerized catalog.

NYU long offered a full athletic program, and was in fact a pioneer in the area of intercollegiate sports. When NYU began playing college football in 1873 it was one of the first football teams established in the United States (following Princeton, Rutgers, Columbia and Yale). Additionally, the current governing body for collegiate sports, the NCAA, was formed as the direct result of a meeting convened in New York City by NYU Chancellor Henry MacCracken in December 1905 to improve the safety of football.

However, in a process somewhat similar to what occurred with NYU's current conference rival Chicago Maroons, athletics were gradually deemphasized at NYU over the passing decades. The school terminated its intercollegiate football program in 1953. In 1971 the basketball program was abruptly dropped. In 1981, at the urging of then president John Brademas, NYU removed its remaining sports from NCAA Division I to Division III. Still, NYU maintains a significant history of athletic success.

Intercollegiate sports at NYU also had moments of importance beyond anything shown by a scoreboard. In the 1940 season, before a football game between NYU and Missouri in Columbia, Missouri, 2,000 NYU students protested against the "gentlemen's agreement" to exclude African-American athletes (at the University of Missouri's request). At the time, it was the largest protest ever against this practice.

Since beginning play in 1873, NYU football has had many football players earn recognition for their achievements, most notably 1928 All-American and future Hall-of-Famer Ken Strong. The Violets played their games at Ohio Field, which still exists on NYU's former University Heights campus at Bronx Community College. The most successful football coach in NYU history was Chick Meehan, who coached the team to seven successful seasons from 1925 to 1931. In 1939, head coach Mal Stevens led NYU to a 5–1 start and the program's only appearance in the AP Poll, before fading to a 5–4 final record. Additionally, the model for the Heisman Trophy is based on 1930s NYU football star Ed Smith. Despite some shining moments, however, Time magazine characterized NYU's overall football history as mostly "lean" in 1942, and NYU permanently dropped the sport as a varsity program after the 1952 season.

While a member of Division I, the Violets' men's basketball program achieved far greater success than the school's football team. Its best NCAA tournament result was finishing as national runner-up to Oklahoma State (coached by the legendary Henry Iba) in the 1945 NCAA tournament, with future NBA Hall of Famer Dolph Schayes playing for NYU. NYU returned to the Final Four in 1960, losing to Ohio State, whose roster featured legends Jerry Lucas and John Havlicek. NYU was even more successful in the years before the advent of the NIT tournament (in 1938) or the NCAA tournament (in 1939). In 1920 NYU won the Amateur Athletic Union national championship tournament, led by the Helms Athletic Foundation Player of the Year, Howard Cann, and the 19–1 NYU team of 1935 was named (retrospectively) by the Helms Foundation and the Premo-Porretta Power Poll as the best team in the nation. The Violets' most recent post-season accomplishment as a Division I school was finishing as the runner-up to BYU in the 1966 National Invitation Tournament. Their six appearances in the NCAA basketball tournament are the second-most among teams no longer in Division I (after Oklahoma City University's 11), and their nine wins are the most among those teams.

NYU maintained a nationally ranked basketball team through the sixties with such stars as Barry Kramer and Satch Sanders going to the NBA. The Violets played most of their games in Madison Square Garden, most notably their duels with UCLA led by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but games against less exalted local opponents like Fordham were played in the field house on the NYU campus in University Heights.