Victory by Affiliation? Evaluating the Relationship Between Division I Athletics and Institutions of Higher Education in a Conference-Centric Landscape
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The rise of television drastically changed the landscape of college athletics. Responding to new incentives, the world of Division I FBS football has become increasingly conference-centric, as institutional leadership has begun to prioritize the needs of the conference over all else. While, historically, athletic success has been shown to have a minor positive e↵ect on the number of applicants a college or university receives, the new conference-centric landscape imposes new costs on the institutions involved, rendering the functionality of the old relationship somewhat obselete. This paper uses recent bouts of conference realignment to assess the value in conference aliation and to see if the increased costs of conference-centrism are met with equalizing benefits. Results indicate that there are no significant benefits associated with a conference of particular athletic or academic quality, though there may be a slight increase in applicants, decrease in admissions rate, and increase in SAT scores associated with joining one of the six “power conferences”— the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, PAC-12, SEC, and Big East.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | May 2014 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Cox, Lydia |
|---|---|
| Primary advisor | Shoven, John B. |
| Degree granting institution | Stanford University, Department of Economics |
Subjects
| Subject | NCAA |
|---|---|
| Subject | conference realignment |
| Subject | positional good |
| Subject | post-secondary education |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
| Related item | |
|---|---|
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/mw170bj5387 |
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- Use and reproduction
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Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Cox, Lydia. (2014). Victory by Affiliation? Evaluating the Relationship Between Division I Athletics and Institutions of Higher Education in a Conference-Centric Landscape. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/mw170bj5387
Collection
Stanford University, Department of Economics, Honors Theses
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- econ@stanford.edu
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