Does college football impact the size of university applicant pools and the quality of entering students?

This study looks at the impact of a university making a surprise (“Cinderella”) run in the men’s NCAA basketball tournament. Our results suggest that surprise success in the tournament has little to no impact on the quantity of applications in subsequent years. However, we find that freshmen enrollments increase for private schools two academic years after a Cinderella run (with mixed results on the quality of freshmen—although not worse). Given an average private school, with 1,253 freshmen and paid tuition of $24,428 (each year) plus room and board, a Cinderella run is worth approximately $7.3 million in 2012-dollars.

Section: Related Researchmentioning

confidence: 97%

The “Cinderella Effect”: The Value of Unexpected March Madness Runs as Advertising for the Schools

Collier

Haskell

Rotthoff

et al. 2020

“…His contention is that continued athletic success leads to a more solid sports culture and therefore a higher perceived quality of the institution. Lastly, Caudill, Hourican, and Mixon (2018) detected that when a university eliminates a football team, their applicant pool shrinks and their ACT scores fall.…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Universities Behaving Badly: The Impact of Athletic Malfeasance on Student Quality and Enrollment

Eggers

Groothuis

Redding

et al. 2019

National accolades and positive media attention are frequently lavished upon successful collegiate sports programs. Correspondingly, studies have demonstrated that universities often benefit from the achievements of their athletic teams by increasing the schools’ application numbers, student quality, and alumni donations. This study demonstrates that the opposite effect occurs when a university’s sports team is accused of engaging in impropriety. Our findings suggest that the negative attention given to the National Collegiate Athletic Association postseason tournament ban of a men’s basketball program could serve as a signal to prospective students regarding the quality of the institution. This perception ultimately leads to a decrease in the infracting university’s enrollment the year before the ban that then rebounds the year after the ban. However, the ban reduces the percentage of high-achieving students who choose to attend the university after the ban has been implemented.

“…McCormick and Tensley (1987); Tucker and Amato (1993); Chressanthis and Grimes (1993); Murphy and Trandel (1994); Mixon, Trevino, and Minto (2004); Tucker (2005); McEvoy (2005), Smith (2008); Anderson (2017); and Chung (2016) all find a positive advertising effect associated with successful football teams. Caudill, Hourican, and Mixon (2018) examined 10 universities, 9 of which are current D-I, that added or dropped football between 1997 and 2015. They find significantly negative changes in applicant pool size when football is dropped.…”

Section: Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Athleticism in NCAA D-III: It Ain’t Only Football That Matters

Segura

Willner

2019

Most D-III universities field a football team, yet little is known about how a football program can influence the quality of the student body or rate at which students graduate. To evaluate these advertising and effectiveness effects of football, we build balanced panel data sets using available private D-III universities (80–90% of all D-III universities) from 2003 through 2010. We also account for overall athletic participation. Using generalized linear model (GLM) and linear-in-means estimation procedures, we find conditional evidence of the advertising and effectiveness hypotheses of football. We find that female athletes are successful as advertising and effectiveness, while male athletes are negative advertising and of neutral to negative effectiveness.