The Faculty Flutie Factor: Does Football Performance Affect a University’s US News and World Report Peer Assessment Score?

Abstract

Analyzing the peer assessment portion of the US News and World Report's college rankings, we find that administrators and faculty rate more highly universities whose football team receives a greater number of votes in either the final Associated Press or Coaches Poll. Controlling for unobserved heterogeneity, our estimates suggest that a one standard deviation increase in the number of votes received in either the Associated Press or USA Today Coaches' Football Poll is viewed as positively as a forty point increase in a school's SAT score at the 75 th percentile.

The impact of college football on academic achievement

“…Independent of the traits of the students, Mulholland, Tomic, and Sholander (2012) argue that administrators and faculty also hold other institutions in higher regard when have successful sports programs, increasing the college's standing in traditional rankings. When investing in football, or big-time sports in general, university leaders appear to face a tradeoff between the publicity and recruitment fostered by athletic success and its negative impact on student performance.…”

Exploring cognitive bias: expert ratings of business schools

“…Baade and Sundberg, 1996;Gaski and Etzel, 1984;Mulholland et al, 2012;Sigelman and Carter, 1979;Trenkamp, 2009;Turner et al, 2001). Spillovers, in terms of monetary donations (Grimes and Chressanthis, 1994), positive public perceptions (Lovaglia and Lucas, 2005;Trenkamp, 2009), public goodwill (Toma, 1999), and enrollment applications (Trenkamp, 2009) have typically been assessed using undergraduate programs.…”