The objective of the current research was to verify the extent to which Gouldner’s (1954) three patterns of bureaucracy were prevalent in intercollegiate athletic departments. Single and multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) of the data provided by 907 coaches from all three NCAA divisions (n_divI = 322; n_divII = 277; n_divIII = 308) showed that structural relationships among goals, processes, and patterns of bureaucracy were invariant among all three groups of coaches. Substantively, the factor of developmental goals through developmental processes (Trail & Chelladurai, 2000) predicted positively the presence of representative bureaucracy and punishment-centered bureaucracy and negatively the existence of mock bureaucracy. This means that the more athletic departments emphasize academic values, the less the coaches perceive a pattern of loose coupling between rules and actual technical activities. Implications of these results for theory and practice were discussed.