Sports

Stephen F.
Austin State University

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Electronic Theses and Dissertations
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A QUANTITATIVE STUDY OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN

ATHLETIC SPENDING AND INSTITUTIONAL ENROLLMENT
MEASURES IN FCS ATHLETIC INSTITUTIONS
Rob McDermand
[email protected]
Robert D. Mcdermand
Stephen F Austin State University, [email protected]
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INSTITUTIONS" (2018). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 147.
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A QUANTITATIVE STUDY OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ATHLETIC
SPENDING AND INSTITUTIONAL ENROLLMENT MEASURES IN FCS ATHLETIC
INSTITUTIONS
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SPENDING AND INSTITUTIONAL ENROLLMENT MEASURES IN FCS
ATHLETIC INSTITUTIONS
by
Robert D. McDermand, B.A., M.A., M.P.A., M.B.A.
Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of
Stephen F. Austin State University
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements
For the Degree of
Doctor of Education
STEPHEN F. AUSTIN STATE UNIVERSITY

(May 2018)
SPENDING AND INSTITUTIONAL ENROLLMENT MEASURES IN FCS
ATHLETIC INSTITUTIONS
by
Robert D. McDermand, B.A., M.A., M.P.A., M.B.A.
APPROVED:
_________________________________________
Patrick M. Jenlink, Ed.D., Dissertation Chair
_________________________________________
Scott Bailey, Ed.D., Committee Member
_________________________________________
Stephen Kosovich, Ph.D., Committee Member
_________________________________________
Jason Reese, Ph.D., Committee Member
_________________________________________
Troy Davis, Ph.D., Interim Chair, Department of
Secondary Education and Educational Leadership
____________________________________________
Pauline Sampson, Ph.D.,
Dean of Research and Graduate Studies
ABSTRACT
As university budgets face fiscal challenges, it is important that university leaders
make smart fiduciary choices. University leaders are quick to argue that athletics act as a
front porch for universities, are a fundamental part of collegiate life, and that increased
athletic funding will lead to enrollment increases and higher quality applicant pools.
Critics of athletic spending, on the other hand, argue that money spent on college sports
could be spent in other areas of the university.
Using a regression analysis similar to previous research, the purpose of this panel
data regression analysis was to examine the relationship between intercollegiate athletics
and college enrollment at FCS schools during the period between 2003 and 2015.
Specifically, the researcher sought to examine whether institutional athletics expenditures
had an impact on the total enrollments, number of applications, or quality of applicants at
each of the universities within the Southland Conference.
The results of this study showed virtually no relationships between athletic
spending and any of the dependent variables under study. Instead, the findings of this
research suggested that at the FCS level, institutional spending on athletics did not
statistically significantly impact university enrollment, application or student quality
measures.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To my wife, Lawren, and my children, Robert David and Reid Lawrence, you are
my loves and I did all of this for you. Thank you for your patience, I know it will all be
worth it.
Thank you my chair Dr. Patrick Jenlink. Your encouragement throughout this
process has been invaluable and your support has allowed my journey to be among the
most valuable of my life.
Thank you to my committee members, Dr. Stephen Kosovich, Dr. Jason Reese
and Dr. Scott Bailey, all of whom provided valuable insights that helped make my
research richer than it otherwise could have ever been.
“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of
giants.” – Isaac Newton.
iv
DEDICATION
I would like to dedicate this dissertation to my children, Robert and Reid, to
whom I have sage advice.
Boys, education isn’t about memorizing facts or passing tests. School isn’t the
only place where facts exist. Teachers aren’t the only people who can impart knowledge.
Information is everywhere. Learning never ends. Your mind will never stop expanding.
Don’t stop educating yourself just because you’ve “graduated” or because you’ve earned
a “degree” or “diploma.” Feed your mind, boys.
Boys, if you’re not sure what that looks like, hopefully I’ll be in the other room
reading. Just come and ask.
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... vi
DEDICATION .....................................................................................................................v
TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................... vi
LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................. ix
I. INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY ......................................................................1
Introduction ........................................................................................................1
Background of the Problem ...............................................................................3
Theoretical Foundation ......................................................................................6
Statement of the Problem .................................................................................14
Purpose Statement ............................................................................................15
Research Questions ..........................................................................................15
Significance of the Research ............................................................................16
Definition of Terms..........................................................................................17
Assumptions.....................................................................................................21
Limitations/Delimitations ................................................................................22
Organization of the Study ................................................................................22
vi
II. LITERATURE REVIEW ......................................................................................25
Introduction ......................................................................................................25
Athletics in Higher Education ..........................................................................27
FCS Athletics ...................................................................................................29
Psychological Benefits of Intercollegiate Athletics .........................................31
Institutional Spending and Athletic Success ....................................................32
Athletic Success and Student Test Scores .......................................................35
Athletic Success and Admissions Applications ...............................................42
Athletic Success and Financial Giving ............................................................50
Athletic Success and Other Institutional Outcomes.........................................57
De-Escalation of Commitment in Intercollegiate Athletics .............................60
Dropping Intercollegiate Football and Institutional Enrollment ......................65
Fixed Effects Modeling....................................................................................67
Summary ..........................................................................................................70
III. METHODOLOGY ..................................................................................................73
Introduction ......................................................................................................73
Purpose.............................................................................................................74
Research Questions ..........................................................................................74
Research Design...............................................................................................74
Instrumentation ................................................................................................76
Sample..............................................................................................................77
Data Collection ................................................................................................78

vii
Data Analysis ...................................................................................................80
Summary ..........................................................................................................82
IV. FINDINGS ..............................................................................................................84
Introduction ......................................................................................................84
Descriptive Statistics ........................................................................................85
Summary Statistics...........................................................................................97
Results of Research Questions .........................................................................99
Research Question 1 – Total Undergraduate Enrollment ................................99
Research Question 2 – Undergraduate Applications .....................................101
Research Question 3 – Applicant Quality......................................................107
Summary ........................................................................................................114
V. SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS, IMPLICATIONS, AND FUTURE
RECOMMENDATIONS .....................................................................................115
Introduction ....................................................................................................115
Summary of the Study ...................................................................................117
Implications....................................................................................................122
Recommendations for Future Research .........................................................124
Concluding Remarks ......................................................................................127
REFERENCES ................................................................................................................130
VITA ..................................................................................................................147
viii
LIST OF TABLES
Table Page
1. Descriptive Statistics - Total Expenses in the Southland Conference

(2003-2015)................................................................................................86
2. Descriptive Statistics - Total Undergraduate Enrollment in the

Southland Conference (2003-2015) ...........................................................88
3 Descriptive Statistics - Undergraduate Applications in the Southland

Conference (2003-2015) ............................................................................90
4 Descriptive Statistics - SAT Critical Reading Scores in the Southland

Conference (2003-2015) ............................................................................92
5 Descriptive Statistics - SAT Math Scores in the Southland Conference

(2003-2015)................................................................................................94
6 Descriptive Statistics - ACT Composite Scores in the Southland

Conference (2003-2015) ............................................................................96
7 Summary Statistics.....................................................................................98
8 Fixed Effects Regression for Total Undergraduate Enrollment in the

Southland Conference (2003-2015) .........................................................101
9 Fixed Effects Regression for Male Undergraduate Applications

in the Southland Conference (2003-2015) ...............................................103
10 Fixed Effects Regression for Female Undergraduate Applications

11 Fixed Effects Regression for Total Undergraduate Applications

12 Fixed Effects Regression for SAT Critical Reading 25th Percentile

Scores in the Southland Conference (2003-2015) ...................................108
ix
13 Fixed Effects Regression for SAT Critical Reading 75th Percentile
Scores in the Southland Conference (2003-2015) ...................................109
14 Fixed Effects Regression for SAT Math 25th Percentile Scores in the
15 Fixed Effects Regression for SAT Math 75th Percentile Scores in the
16 Fixed Effects Regression for ACT Composite 25th Percentile Scores

17 Fixed Effects Regression for ACT Composite 75th Percentile Scores

x
CHAPTER I
Introduction to the Study
Introduction
The role that intercollegiate athletics have played in higher education has been
dynamic and evolving since the first competitive athletic contests took place between
American colleges in the middle of the 19th century. Athletic departments have evolved
to be perceived as an essential element of the American collegiate experience, so much so
that schools often regard intercollegiate athletics as a necessary expense in order to attract
and enroll students. Athletics can be deemed mission-enhancing because participation
provides valuable learning opportunities for student athletes and enhances the larger
student body by providing a common bond (Toma, 2003).
As college costs have increased substantially in recent years, the debate
surrounding the purpose of intercollegiate athletics has become even more pronounced
and has become a focal point of public discussion (Desrochers, 2013). Many observers
have argued that intercollegiate athletics are an essential component of college life, and
act as a marketing tool for the institution, while others have noted that the cost to
maintain high-level athletics departments has spiraled out of control.
1
2
The offsetting benefits that are thought to justify these costs include large
presumed financial returns to the most successful football and basketball
programs; the pleasure of competing; positive effects on school spirit; stronger
ties to alumni as well as local communities; and increased visibility for the school.
(Turner, Meserve & Bowen, 2001, p. 813)
Increasingly, however, “. . . scholars and critics have raised questions about whether
these programs are worth what they cost . . .” (Turner, Meserve & Bowen, 2001, p. 813).
Collegiate athletic programs are often regarded as the front porch of the
university, a tool that colleges can use to expand their brands and generate interest in
their schools from potential students (Bass, Schaeperkoetter & Bunds, 2015; Chudacoff,
2015; Fisher, 2009, Lavigne & Schlabach, 2017). The necessity of maintaining
intercollegiate athletics programs has become the crux of ongoing arguments between
college administrators, faculty, presidents and boards of trustees, all of whom have
differing priorities and perceived goals for their universities. While many presidents
firmly support the advertising effects of intercollegiate athletics, others like Duderstadt
(2001) argue that “. . . the mad race for fame and profits through intercollegiate athletics
is clearly a fool’s quest . . .” (Duderstadt, 2001, p. 146). Nowhere is this debate more
obvious than at mid-sized regional colleges and universities that compete at the NCAA
Division 1 FCS level, where students contribute large percentages of their tuition and
student fee money to pay for intercollegiate athletics programs (Desrochers, 2013;
Johnson, 2014).
3
Background of the Problem
Researchers have identified the shifting market for higher education as causing a
growing rift between colleges and their collegiate athletic programs. Specifically, the
traditional funding sources for universities, such as state and federal government
appropriations, are shrinking at a time when college is increasing in costs (Cheslock &
Knight, 2015). Many universities will likely face difficult challenges in the near future as
they are reaching their price ceilings with regard to increasing the cost of tuition for their
students, and are subsequently running out of ways to increase revenues (Bass,
Schaeperkoetter & Bunds, 2015; Cheslock & Knight, 2015). With regards to
intercollegiate athletics, there are only a handful of elite level Division I athletics
programs producing the bulk of all revenues for all of college athletics, mainly through
television revenues, while the vast majority of schools lose large sums of money
supporting college sports (Bok, 2009; Desrochers, 2013). Following the economic
recession of 2008 “. . . academic resources were strained (and) only the FBS reined in
escalating athletic spending per athlete in 2010; nevertheless, athletic subsidies per
athlete continued to increase in all subdivisions despite these financial constraints . . . ”
(Desrochers, 2013, p. 2). As traditional university revenue sources continue to shift away
from higher education, the schools most responsible for the revenue generation are
increasingly more likely to find ways to maintain a tight grip on revenues, leaving
smaller schools with even fewer financial resources in which to support themselves
(Cheslock & Knight, 2015; Labaree, 2017).

4
As the revenues at the largest schools rises a cascading effect on expenditures
takes place where these schools will continue to spend more money on intercollegiate
athletics, and the effect will be that smaller schools will look to increase their spending to
keep up with big-time programs but will not have the additional revenue sources
necessary to balance their budgets (Bass, Schaeperkoetter & Bunds, 2015; Desrochers,
2013; Estler & Nelson, 2005). Without traditional revenue sources available to fill in the
growing gap between income and expenditures, smaller schools will seek even more
revenue from student fees and other university subsidies (Bass, Schaeperkoetter &
Bunds, 2015; Cheslock & Knight, 2015; Desrochers, 2013; Estler & Nelson, 2005).
Subsidies and student fees are frequently used by institutions to support numerous
activities, which help the universities meet their overall academic and social missions
(Denhart & Ridpath, 2011). In many cases,
. . . institutional subsidies implicitly drain resources that could otherwise support
the core academic missions of teaching and research. General tuition fees may be
raised to cover academic costs that would have been fundable from other revenues
were it not for rising athletic costs . . . (Denhart & Ridpath, 2011, p. 1)
The challenge facing university leaders with regards to athletics is whether the
increased financial investment in intercollegiate athletics creates the returns on those
investments and furthers the overall mission of higher education (Denhart & Ridpath,
2011; Desrochers, 2013). “The difficult question facing colleges and universities . . . ,”
Cheslock and Knight argued, “. . . is how much to subsidize each mission-enhancing
activity given limited funds . . . ” (Cheslock & Knight, 2015, p. 436). Jones (2014b)
5
argues that “. . . some college administrators are considering whether the expense of
football outweighs the benefits of fielding a team . . .” (Jones, 2014b, p. 108). As the
financial climate for higher education shifts dramatically, university leaders must assess
whether investment in athletics is a good or better investment than other campus
activities or academic initiatives that could better serve the broadest goals of their
institutions.
As college costs swelled throughout the late 1990s through 2007, so did the
spending on collegiate athletics, where revenues and expenses are tied closely with
tuition costs and student fees (Bass, Schaeperkoetter & Bunds, 2015). When the Great
Recession began in 2008 and states began cutting appropriations to higher education, the
costs of attending college increased even more and the burden to pay for school shifted
from the state to the student, but costs to maintain athletic programs did not shrink
(Johnson, 2014). Increased spending on college athletics during this period has often led
to deficits that have been augmented by university finances (Denhart & Ridpath, 2011;
Hearn, 2002). Following the recession and thanks largely to the increased television
contracts provided to athletic conferences from ESPN and other cable sports channels, a
series of conference realignments took place in 2010 that had a dramatic effect on the
landscape of Division 1 athletics programs, as large athletic programs huddled together in
the ‘Power 5’ conferences that had financially lucrative media contracts (Hoffer &
Pincin, 2016).
Mid-sized and smaller Division 1 programs were left to compete in conferences
that could no longer attract as much media attention, and thus lower payouts, but had to
6
compete athletically against teams from the larger conferences in order to maintain their
Division 1 status. Mid-sized athletic conferences took on roles that traditionally were left
to larger conferences, and their missions changed dramatically. As Hawkins (2010)
noted, “. . . although the original purpose of (the NCAA and Division 1 conferences)
existence was legislative, they have evolved to be in the business of marketing goods and
services and wealth distribution . . .” (p. 133). The need to keep competing at the highest
levels, and the draw to increase spending to do so, created disconnects between the goals
of athletic programs and the financial needs of students in higher education throughout
the country. Athletic departments believe that funding winning programs should be a
priority at universities that want to compete in Division 1 sports, while the increasing
costs to maintain winning programs are being absorbed by students who are already
paying more for college than at any point in history (Fulks, 2009).
Theoretical Foundation
The challenge for university policy makers is to decide whether the investment in
college athletics is worth it to further the mission of the university itself. Debate exists
between groups who support the idea that intercollegiate athletics are an essential
component of college life, and act as a marketing tool for the institution, while those who
oppose athletic spending argue that the cost to maintain high-level athletics departments
has spiraled out of control (Turner, Meserve, & Bowen, 2001). With the financial
challenges facing many schools throughout the country, there is a serious need to discuss
the role that athletics plays in the success or failure of institutions of higher learning.
7
Two theories were used to frame this study: economic arms race theory and Fort’s
(2013, 2016) agency theory. The dynamic friction between these two theories provides a
theoretical foundation regarding how university administrators allocate money for
athletic spending and how intercollegiate athletics are situated in relationship the broader
university setting.
As Shulman and Bowen (2001) noted, “. . . it is almost impossible to have an
extended conversation with an athletics director of a program operating at any level of
play without hearing the metaphor of an arms race invoked . . .” (Shulman & Bowen,
2001, p. 227). From an economic perspective, an arms race is an extension of game
theory similar to a prisoner’s dilemma that occurs when two or more entities try to gain a
competitive advantage over one another through increased spending on tools believed to
provide them with a strategic leverage in the race to the goal (Von Neumann &
Morgenstern, 1990). Typically each of the entities responds to the move made by their
competitor in a sequenced game, with first movers achieving brief advantages over their
opponents before equilibrium is re-established when the second entity makes its move.
Militaristically this can be seen in the example of the nuclear arms race between the
United States and Soviet Union during the Cold War, where each country built larger and
more technologically sophisticated missile defense systems in order to render their
opponents’ obsolete (Nissani, 1992). Recognizing, however, that their own defense
systems would quickly become obsolete once their opponents employed the same
strategy, each side invested in further missile technology that would result in a (brief)
advantage (Nissani, 1992). Since neither nation actually used the weapons on their
8
opponent, the cumulative effect of the nuclear arms race was a détente with an enormous
price tag, the same outcome that could have been achieved at virtually no expense
(Nissani, 1992).
Galbraith (1976) described the perpetuation of the nuclear arms race as being
fueled by economic, bureaucratic and militaristic dynamics. Those who controlled the
arms race had an incentive to keep the arms race going, even after it became clear that the
same outcome could be achieved by negotiating an end to nuclear aggression. In
laymen’s terms, once the arms race became an arms race, it was a perpetual motion
machine that could only end with the mutual destruction of the world or the inevitable
collapse of one of the competitors (Galbraith, 1976). While each country believed that at
each stage of the game they were obtaining an advantage over their opponent, history
shows that neither nation achieved that aim through the arms race, and instead the out of
control military spending may have, in fact, partially led to the collapse of the Soviet
Union.
The nuclear arms race has been used as a metaphor to describe the increased
spending on intercollegiate athletics as schools that seek anything other than winning
national championships are often perceived as “surrendering” (Shulman & Bowen, 2001,
p. 284). Instead of building intercontinental nuclear missiles, schools compete with one
another to build bigger stadiums, improve ancillary facilities, increase coaches’ salaries,
and improve other amenities within their athletics departments (Bowen & Levin, 2003;
Clotfelter, 2011; Getz & Seigfried, 2012). As one school improves its facilities, arms
race theory suggests that other schools throughout the country do the same to keep pace
9
with the first mover and not fall victim to the advantage gained by their opponents (Getz
& Seigfried, 2012; Hoffer, Humphreys, Lacombe & Ruseski, 2015). However, like the
nuclear arms race between the USSR and United States, as each school makes a move to
gain an advantage, that advantage is quickly negated by the move made by the next
competitor, who builds a bigger stadium or finds a more marquee head football coach
(Tsitsos & Nixon, 2012).
Arms race theory posits that while one school maneuvers to win more contests, it
comes at a cost to another school, which must now raise its own bar to achieve the
success it lost at the expense of another institution’s success. This game-like behavior,
however, simply provokes the first school to increase its spending to once again achieve
success, and cumulatively both schools end up neutral because there will always be a
loser (Stafford, 2010). Only through collective action taken at the highest levels of
collegiate sport, at the NCAA level, to curb spending, the arms race theorist suggest, can
a substantial change take place, as “unilateral disarmament” does not seem to be taking
place (Bowen & Levin, 2003, p. 317).
While most frequently associated with the literal accumulation of nuclear
weapons during the Cold War, economic arms race theory has been applied in a number
of ways to research in intercollegiate athletics. Despite its typical connection to the Cold
War experience, the arms race label has been applied to college athletics since before the
First World War (Estler & Nelson, 2005). Arms race theory in college sports appears in
the literature in an article by Edwards (1986) as it relates to increased spending on
recruitment of college athletes following the passing of Proposition 48 and the impact
10
that rule would have on recruiting black athletes. Edwards argued that in the landscape
of building winning athletic programs, “. . . there is today disturbingly consistent
evidence that athlete recruitment and development among major collegiate football and
basketball institutions (that) has degenerated into a spiraling ‘athletic arms race’ wherein
student-athletes are both the most strategic material and chief casualties . . .” (Edwards,
1986, p. 24).
In their empirical study of the effects of college athletics on universities, Orszag
and Israel (2009) framed one of their research questions as “. . . Division I-A athletic
expenditures exhibit an ‘arms race,’ in which increased operating expenditures by schools
in a conference are associated with increases at other schools in the same conference . . .”
(Orszag & Israel, 2009, p. 11). The findings of the research question, the researchers
noted, was that “. . . the data do provide some support for an arms race between schools
in a given conference, or at least correlation between current and lagged athletic spending
across schools in the same conference . . .” (Orszag & Israel, 2009, p. 12). Denhart and
Ridpath (2011) used the phrase arms race to describe the rapidly increasing student fees
being charged by universities to support athletic department subsidies. Clotfelter (2011)
argued that the increase in spending on athletic facilities, coaches’ salaries and overall
athletic spending “. . . certainly looks like an arms race in spending on athletics . . .”
(Clotfelter, 2011, p. 123). Tsitsos and Nixon (2012) examined arms race theory through
the lens of head football and men’s basketball coach’s salaries, and argue that the desire
for colleges to attract star coaches drives up the value for coaches at a rate far exceeding
other aspects of university spending.

11
In contrast to the arms race theory, Fort (2013, 2016) argued that university
administrators are less naïve than arms race logic implies and that they, in fact, influence
explicit agency over financial decisions regarding athletics spending. Fort noted that “. . .
arms race logic, imposes strained assumptions about the cooperative setting and the
naiveté of university administrators, along with a curious distinction of one type of
revenue to reach its conclusions . . .” (Fort, 2016, p. 119). Furthermore, the researcher
stated that the “arms race explanation completely omits the actual consideration of the
university budgeting process . . .” (Fort, 2016, p. 119). The problem of the pervasiveness
of the arms race theory, Fort argued, is that it is so extensive that it is casually referred to
in academic research as well as public discourse and popular media regardless of its
accuracy (Fort, 2016; Weight, Navarro, Huffman & Smith-Ryan, 2014). Fort noted that
in recent literature, the term “arms race” has appeared casually in reference to themes in
athletics on broad topics that extend beyond financial spending, including broad subjects
like the psychological benefits of athletics participation, by organizations like the NCAA,
and by advocacy groups such as the Drake Group and the Knight Commission on
Intercollegiate Athletics (Drake Group, 2015; Fort, 2016; Knight Commission on
Intercollegiate Athletics, 2009; Weight, et al., 2014).
Fort rejects the arms race theory because he believes that it neglects to consider
the benefits that athletics bring to the university when challenging the costs; especially
because proponents of the arms race explanation typically argue that any investment in
college athletics is wasteful spending (Fort, 2013, 2016). Budget allocations to athletics,
he argues, are “. . . comparatively small investments in values across the rest of the
12
campus that both university administrator objectives and cover their costs . . .” (Fort,
2016, p. 120). Furthermore, proponents of arms race spending, Fort argued, “. . . simply
label the investment in the athletic department by university administrators as somehow
different than ‘generated’ revenues and call it a ‘subsidy’. . . (and) from this accounting
fiction, athletic departments lose money if generated revenues are less than spending . . .”
(Fort, 2013, p. 42). Agency theory considers the fact that athletic budgets are not forever
expanding but instead are a reaction to the university administration’s willingness to
spend on athletics. Rather than see Athletic Directors as naïve participants in an ongoing
arms race, Fort argued that “. . . it is more reasonable to expect that ADs would simply
scale back operations if they were told that university budget allocations to their
department were to be phased out . . .” (Fort, 2013, p. 48).
Instead, agency theory argues that university administrators invest in college
athletics because of their belief that the benefits of doing so impact the university at a
level justifiable for the investment made to athletics. Fort (2013) connected athletic
spending to broader trends in university spending when he states that
. . . university administrators invest significantly in all departments under their
control. . . (and) in turn, these administrators expect a return along the dimensions
that matter for their pursuits – research, teaching, and service…thus athletic
departments are not a ‘drag’ on the university budget…instead they are just
another investment center that yields a return that matters to university
administrators . . . (Fort, 2013, p. 42)

13
Overall, agency theory posits that money spent on athletics is, according to university
leadership, being put to its most economically advantageous use, for if it was allocated to
other university departments the university would be reallocating “. . . their budget
inefficiently relative to their end objectives of research, teaching, and service . . .” (Fort,
2013, p.44).
Where the arms race explanation relies on the argument that university
administrators and athletic leaders are trapped in the arms race based on a naïve set of
assumptions, agency theory argues that university administrators understand the financial
relationship between athletics and their institutions (Bowen & Levin, 2003; Fort, 2013).
Instead of seeing university administrators and athletic directors as naïve, Fort (2013)
argued that those constituents are instead “. . . keenly aware of their environment . . .”
and are not looking at athletic spending as a financial sinkhole (Fort, 2013, p. 27).
Agency theory, then, focuses on answering the question of whether university
administrators get a reasonable return on their financial investment in college sports
(Fort, 2013).
The fundamental difference between the two theories, then, is the underlying
motivation of university leaders to emphasize the importance of college athletics on their
campuses and financially support athletics in order to meet institutional goals.
Proponents of the arms race theory of athletic spending believe that institutions are
caught in an unwinnable game and university administrators are naively spending finite
resources on athletics with no measureable goal in play. Conversely, agency theorists
suggest that the relationship between university leadership and athletic spending is more
14
nuanced and that university administrators invest in athletics because it is the best use of
money to achieve desired institutional outcomes.
Statement of the problem
The problem addressed in this study was the absence of an economic model that
predicts or demonstrates the relationship between athletic spending and FCS institutional
admissions outcomes such as enrollment and student quality as defined by test scores in
the period between 2003 and 2015. Without an economic model that explains the
relationship between financial investment in athletics and measurable university
enrollment and student quality outcomes, university leaders at the FCS level are left to
make significant financial investments in athletics with virtually no conclusive proof to
demonstrate the efficacy of the costs of college sports at their schools. Previous research
has been mixed regarding the benefits for NCAA Division I colleges and universities
from the existence of their intercollegiate athletics programs (Jones, 2014; Litan, Orszag
& Orszag, 2003; Murphy & Trandel, 1994; Orszag & Israel, 2009; Toma & Cross, 1998).
There have been few studies that have specifically examined the enrollment
impact of intercollegiate athletics on mid-major Division I schools, specifically schools
placed in conferences outside of the Power 5 Football Bowl Subdivision (Cheslock &
Knight, 2012; Cross, 1999; Lee, 2012). As university administrators look to allocate
limited financial resources, the impact of the existence of athletics must be explored.
Larger athletics departments at the Bowl Championship FBS level are better able than
smaller departments at the Football Championship FCS level to offset the costs of
athletics with revenues that athletics provides through channels such as ticket sales,
15
licensing agreements, and conference television contracts, and generally have a smaller
proportion of their costs covered with student subsidies (Denhart & Ridpath, 2011).
The role of athletics, therefore, at these smaller schools must be examined
separately from the trends occurring at the highest levels of college sports in order to get
a true picture of the impact college athletics has on schools that are typically less visible
than the largest schools competing in big-time college athletics.
Purpose Statement
The purpose of this panel data regression analysis was to examine the relationship
between intercollegiate athletics and college enrollment of schools situated in the
Southland Conference, a mid-major NCAA Division I athletic conference, during the
period between 2003 and 2015. Specifically, the researcher sought to examine whether
institutional athletics expenditures have an impact on the number of applications,
enrollments or quality of applicants at each of the universities within the Southland
Conference.
Research Questions
The following research questions were addressed:
1. What is the relationship between athletics spending and total undergraduate
enrollment at Southland Conference member institutions during the period
between 2003 and 2015?
2. What is the relationship between athletics spending and undergraduate
applications at Southland Conference member institutions during the period

16
3. What is the relationship between athletics spending and applicant quality at
Southland Conference member institutions during the period between 2003
and 2015?
Significance of the Research
Given the fiscal climate in higher education, it is important that university leaders
make smart fiduciary choices that lead colleges and universities into the future without
burying students with unnecessary debt due to their education. University leadership and
others who control athletic budgets are often quick to argue that athletics are a
fundamental part of collegiate life and must be financially supported at all costs. Others
argue that increased athletic funding, beyond the general increases in annual operational
costs, will lead to enrollment increases or higher quality applicant pools (Dosh, 2013).
Critics of athletic spending point out that money spent on college sports could be better
spent in other areas of the university, specifically in academic areas (Desrochers, 2013).
Given the lack of existing research on the empirical effects of institutional athletic
expenditures on enrollment outcomes and student quality at the Division I FCS level, the
pros and cons of college sports at this level are highly ambiguous. By focusing
specifically on admissions and enrollment effects of athletics at the Division I FCS level,
this study provides a unique lens for university leaders to begin discussing the
relationship between athletic spending and institutional outcomes at this level of college
athletics.
Specifically, faculty, administrators, and university leaders at Southland
Conference member institutions can use the findings of this study to guide future policies
17
on athletics spending knowing how athletics affects measurable university outcomes.
From a broader perspective, FCS and Division I-AAA schools could use these findings to
influence policy decisions on their campuses, but with their unique regional and
institutional variables in mind.
Definition of Terms
This study specifically examined the relationship between institutional athletic
expenditures and enrollment and student quality as measured by test scores at schools
positioned within the Southland Conference, an NCAA Division I FCS intercollegiate
athletics conference. For the purposes of this study, the following definitions provide
clarity of the conceptual terms examined.
Intercollegiate athletics.
Competitive sports organized between two or more colleges or universities and
organized through the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) or National
Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) (Brunet, 2010).
National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).
The NCAA is a membership organization consisting of more than 1000 colleges
and universities throughout the United States and Canada that sponsor intercollegiate
athletics (NCAA, 2016). The NCAA breaks schools down into three classifications,
Division I, Division II and Division III. Division I schools generally have the largest
student bodies and manage the largest athletics budgets. Division I is broken into three
sub-categories: Football Bowl Championship Series (BCS/FBS/DI-A), Football
Championship Series (FCS/DI-AA) and non-football schools (DI-AAA). The level of

18
competition at the Bowl Championship Series level is considered the highest within
Division I, with the other two sub-categories being less competitive but still higher than
Division II or Division III (NCAA, 2016).
Football Championship Subdivision (FCS).
The characteristics of Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) and
Division I non-football playing, formerly Division I-AA, athletics departments are key to
understanding the unique challenges these institutions have when competing within
NCAA Division I athletics. When compared to Division I Football Bowl Subdivision
(FBS) institutions, FCS schools sponsor fewer NCAA championship sports, fourteen as
opposed to the FBS requirement of sixteen, including football, with each sport meeting
broader NCAA participation requirements in order to count towards sponsorship status
(Bass, Schaeperkoetter & Bunds, 2015; NCAA, 2017). FCS schools must schedule at
least 50% of their regular season football contests against other Division I opponents, but
can maintain a lower football home game attendance requirement to maintain
membership (to meet higher FBS requirements a school must average more than 15,000
actual or paid attendees per home contest throughout a regular season) (Bass,
Schaeperkoetter & Bunds, 2015; NCAA, 2017).
Scholarship limits at the FCS and non-football Division I level are lower than at
the Division I FBS level, with FCS institutions only permitted to issue 63 scholarships in
football (FBS schools can award up to 85) and with all schools having the ability to
award less total financial aid or athletics grants-in-aid to the total number of athletes in all
other sports (Bass, Schaeperkoetter & Bunds, 2015; NCAA, 2017). Overall, the total
19
budgets for Division I FCS schools in 2015-2016 ranged from $4.3 million to $45.2
million, and for Division I non-football playing schools ranged from $3.9 million to
$35.8 million. In both cases, the averages for the two subdivisions was far below
Division I Football Bowl Subdivision institutions, whose budgets in 2015-2016 ranged
from $13.05 million to $155.3 million (Equity in Athletics Data Analysis Cutting Tool).
In total, just twenty-four Division I athletic departments, all FBS programs,
earned positive revenue in 2015-2016, with net losses for all FBS schools averaging more
than $15 million (Equity in Athletics Data Analysis Cutting Tool). No Division I FCS or
non-football institute during that period produced a net profit, and all schools in the two
subdivisions relied heavily on institutional student fees and subsidies to balance their
budgets. On average, FCS institutions received 71% of their revenues from student fees
and other institutional financial transfers, while non-football institutions received an
average of 77% of their revenues from fees and subsidies. Furthermore, FCS institutions
operated at an average net loss of more than $11 million dollars (with a range from a high
of $35.7 million to a low of $2.1 million) while non-football schools lost an average of
$10.7 million (with a range of $31.2 million to a low of $2.8 million) (Equity in Athletics
Data Analysis Cutting Tool).
Southland Conference.
An NCAA FCS athletic conference formed in 1963 and headquartered in Frisco,
Texas, whose membership currently consists of 13 member schools geographically
located in Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas. Member institutions include Abilene
Christian University (FCS), Houston Baptist University (FCS), the University of

20
Incarnate Word (FCS), the University of New Orleans (Div I-AAA), the University of
Central Arkansas (FCS), Lamar University (FCS), McNeese State University (FCS),
Nicholls State University (FCS), Northwestern State University (FCS), Sam Houston
State University (FCS), Southeastern Louisiana University (FCS), Stephen F. Austin
State University (FCS) and Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi (Div I-AAA)
(Southland Conference, 2016).
Institutional athletic expenditures.
All direct and indirect revenues and expenses related to intercollegiate athletics
programs, as reported annually to the Office of Postsecondary Education of the U.S.
Department of Education. Revenue items include all student fees directly allocated to
athletics, all direct institutional support, which are financial transfers directly from the
general fund to athletics, indirect institutional support, such as the payment of utilities,
maintenance, support salaries, etc. by the institution in behalf of athletics, and direct
governmental support including the receipt of funds from state and local governmental
agencies that are designated for athletics. Additionally, generated revenues are produced
by the athletics department and include ticket sales, radio and television receipts, alumni
contributions, guarantees, royalties, NCAA distributions, and other revenue sources that
are not dependent upon entities outside the athletics department (Fulks, 2009; Orzag &
Israel, 2009). Expense items include athletic student aid in the form of student
scholarships, living expenses and cost of attendance, coach salaries, benefits and bonuses,
support staff and administrator salaries and benefits, game expenses, game guarantees,
21
operating expenses such as travel, equipment and maintenance, medical expenses and
recruiting expenses (Fulks, 2010; Orzag & Israel, 2009).
Undergraduate enrollment.
The sum of students enrolled for credit with each student counted only once
during the reporting period, regardless of when the student enrolled in a 4- or 5-year
bachelor's degree program, an associate's degree program, or a vocational or technical
program below the baccalaureate (National Center for Education Statistics, 2016).
Applicant quality.
Student academic quality as assessed by using average SAT Critical Reading,
SAT Math and ACT Composite 25th and 75th percentile scores (Tucker & Amato, 2006;
US News & World Reports, 2016).
Assumptions
Throughout this research, the researcher assumed that the data being examined
was accurate and had been reported correctly and honestly by each institution in the
Southland Conference during the period from 2003 through 2015. The data sources used,
such as the Equity in Athletics Data Analysis Cost Cutting Tool, and the Integrated
Postsecondary Education Data System are the most common archival data sites for
information related to higher education spending and enrollment trends, and are the most
commonly used data sets employed throughout the relevant literature. Furthermore,
government sites such as the National Center for Education Statistics and the United
States Bureau of Economic Analysis are both robust longitudinal data sets that have
collected, maintained, and distributed publically available archival data since the 1970s.
22
Limitations/Delimitations
The sample for this study was limited to schools that had competed athletically in
the NCAA Division I Southland Conference between the 2003 and 2015 academic years.
During this time period a handful of schools left the conference to join larger athletic
conferences during the conference realignment period that began in 2010, and additional
schools were added as replacements to maintain enough membership in the conference to
continue competing at the Division I level. Due to the size and region of the Southland
Conference, the findings of this study cannot be generalized to all institutions throughout
the country, especially those at different levels of NCAA membership. Since the data
collected for this study took place during two significant transitionary periods for higher
education and athletics, the Great Recession and conference realignment, the findings
may not be indicative of future trends in enrollment at the institutions being studied.
A potential concern was avoided in this study by selecting a date range from 2003
to 2015. In 2016 the SAT test was substantially redesigned and given a new weighting
structure, which could substantially shift the findings of this study. To delimit that
possibility, the years under study for this research include only those in which the SAT
test was administered in a standard manner. A similar concern arose in the Pope and
Pope (2009) study, where SAT data was significantly skewed by the major overhaul of
the test in 1995, and thus created a challenge for accurate data analysis.
Organization of the Study
This study consists of five chapters, including (1) the introduction, (2) a review of
the relevant literature regarding the intersection if intercollegiate athletics and

23
institutional outcomes, to gain a better understanding of the research questions, (3) an
explanation of the research methods employed by this study to answer the research
questions, (4) the findings of the data collection and statistical regressions, and (5) the
summary, conclusions, implications and recommendations of this research.
Specifically, Chapter I provides the reader with an introduction to intercollegiate
athletics and its role within higher education, introduces the problem being studied,
provides a background of the problem in the context of this study, defines the purpose of
the study, the significance of the study, and describes how the study will be organized.
Chapter II introduces the relevant literature surrounding intercollegiate athletics,
higher education, and the relationship between athletic investment and success and
institutional outcomes. A variety of literature is examined, including sources that address
issues such as the psychological benefits of intercollegiate athletics, the relationship
between athletic spending and on-field success, the relationship between athletic
achievement and institutional enrollment measures, the de-escalation of commitment in
athletics, and the enrollment effects of discontinuing Division I intercollegiate athletics
programs. The conclusion of the chapter provides an explanation of fixed effects
modeling and its relevance to the literature and application on previous studies.
Chapter III introduces the research methodology used by the researcher when
answering the research questions explored in this study. This chapter discusses the fixed
effects regression model used to address the research questions and explains the model’s
instrumentation. The chapter further describes the research design, sampling, data
collection and data analysis used for this study.

24
Chapter IV examines the findings of the data collection and fixed effects
regression analyses used by the researcher when exploring the research questions in this
study. Descriptive statistics are provided to establish the context of the findings and then
the results of ten separate regression analyses are presented with specific attention paid to
the statistically significant relationships in the data.
Chapter V provides a summary conclusion for the study and a space where the
researcher explores the implications of the research findings. This chapter also discusses
recommendations for future research based on unanswered questions in this research and
also concludes the research paper entirely.

CHAPTER II
Literature Review
Introduction
The impact of college athletic success in relation to the broader goals of higher
education is an issue that has in recent years been explored by scholars from a number of
different perspectives through a wide variety of academic disciplines. There have been a
number of quantitative and qualitative studies on the effects of intercollegiate athletics on
college admissions, student application quality, enrollment and retention, and university
prestige (Basten, 2002; Brunet, 2010; Harshaw, 2009; Peterson-Horner & Eckstein, 2015;
Pope & Pope, 2009; Toma & Cross, 1998). These studies have come from disciplines as
different as economics, psychology, education and public policy with each discipline
providing its own theoretical lens to assess the role that intercollegiate athletics has
within higher education.
The purpose of this panel data regression analysis was to examine the relationship
between intercollegiate athletics and college enrollment of schools situated in the
Southland Conference, a mid-major NCAA Division 1 athletic conference, during the
period between 2003 and 2015. In the process of addressing this purpose, the following
research questions were addressed:
25
26
and 2015?
This literature review explores the existing literature on the relationships between
intercollegiate athletic expenditures and institutional athletic and academic outcomes, and
exposes the gap where there is an absence of an economic model that predicts or
demonstrates the relationship between athletic spending and FCS institutional admissions
outcomes in the period between 2003 and 2015. Additionally, this review introduces the
topic of Division 1 intercollegiate athletics at the FCS level, examines the qualitative
links between collegiate athletics and higher education, the links between athletic
spending and athletic success, the relationship between athletic success and institutional
enrollment and student quality outcomes, the relationship between athletic success and
fundraising and alumni support, and the growing debate over commitment de-escalation
in collegiate athletics and the institutional consequences of eliminating big-time Division
I athletics.
27
Athletics in Higher Education
The development of college athletics and athletics’ integration into higher
education has been documented by a number of researchers, each of whom has added to
the conversation of the role that sports play in the university community. From the
earliest research on the topic, the question of the purpose of athletics has been asked,
especially “. . . whether an institution in the social order whose primary purpose is the
development of the intellectual life can at the same time serve as an agency to promote
business, industry, journalism, salesmanship and organized athletics on an extensive
commercial basis . . .” (Savage, 1929, p. viii). Most scholars agree that athletics occupies
a challenging position with higher education and is most often linked to the university
through commercialization, spectacle, and an outsized role on campus when compared to
the undergraduate educational missions of the schools (Bok, 2003; Estler & Nelson,
2005; Sperber, 2000; Yost, 2010; Zimbalist, 1999).
Smith (1988) argued that college athletics have played a significant role in the
collective social imagination of the public American university since the first competitive
boat race between Harvard and Yale in 1852. He connected the present to the past
through the themes of commercialization and professionalism in college sports, using the
sponsorships of the first boat race and the payment of the racers as anchors for the big-
time television revenues from modern Division I athletics contests and the recruitment
scandals in late-20th century college basketball (Smith, 1988). He argued that college
sports has always served a commercial function within higher education, acting as a
marketing tool for institutions even during the earliest years of college football, baseball
28
and, later, basketball (Smith, 1988). Smith’s argument is confirmed by Sack and
Staurowsky (1998) who stated that
Few campus activities could better meet (commercialized needs) than
intercollegiate sport. Nothing could better attract the attention of mass media, and
nothing had a greater appeal to the practical minded business leaders who
provided financial support and who increasingly cam to dominate academe’s
governing boards. (Sack & Staurowsky, 1998, p. 20)
Sperber (2000) argued that higher education as a social institution in the United
States experienced mission drift in the late twentieth century as it shifted its focus from
educating young people to providing numerous avenues for entertainment including big
time college athletics, a phenomenon he called “beer and circus” (Sperber, 2000, p. xiv).
More important than challenging work in the classroom was the university’s goal of
fielding a winning football or men’s basketball team and making countless appearances
on national television (Sperber, 2000). The television exposure “. . . of major college
football games, with their two-minute promo spots on the academic aspects of the
schools, indicates the disparity in emphasis. The subtext for viewers is: at these
universities, college sports is far more important than undergraduate education . . .”
(Sperber, 2000, p. 235).
Bok (2003) contended that the marketing and advertising of college athletics has
served as a model for other areas of the modern university to take note of and replicate,
especially as higher education has taken on a more commercialized role in the
marketplace and replaced public funding with private dollars. Bok argued that modern
29
universities have focused many of their resources on developing revenue generating
aspects of higher education, such as pursuing scientific grants, attracting corporate
research dollars, and investing in high return-on-investment online and distance learning
platforms, all of which follow the profit-oriented path started by athletics, and have
moved away from more traditional education-focused initiatives on campus (Bok, 2003).
He stated that “American universities, despite their lofty ideals, are not above sacrificing
academic values – even values as basic as admissions standards and the integrity of their
courses – in order to make money . . .” (Bok, 2003, p. 54). The commercial neoliberal
model, Bok concluded, has become the dominant model for most institutions of higher
education, and is a model built on the lessons learned from college athletics and the role
that sports play in marketing the university (Bok, 2003).
FCS Athletics
As the growing competitive and financial disparities in college athletics began to
galvanize throughout the 1950s and into the 1970s, the NCAA was forced to address the
need to restructure its competitive arrangement due to the difficulty in maintaining
competitive balance between large budget and small budget schools (Crowley, 2006;
Gurney, Lopiano & Zimbalist, 2017). Beginning in 1973 the NCAA took steps to divide
its member institutions into three subdivisions of schools that would be aligned more
equitably among membership and would grant each subdivision the ability to set its own
membership criteria (Crowley, 2006; Gurney, et al., 2017; NCAA, 2017). Pressing issues
such as budgetary requirements, financial aid given to student-athletes, attendance
requirements for athletic contests, and other cost measures could, following the
30
restructuring, be covered by different rules in each division (Crowley, 2006). This three
tiered subdivision structure is still roughly the structure that the NCAA follows currently,
with Divisions I, II and III. When subdivisions were introduced,
. . . 233 institutions aligned themselves in Division III, 194 chose Division II and
237 elected Division I as their home. Of the latter number, 111 did not sponsor
football. Of the 126 that did, most operated major program in the sport. Many,
though, did not. This difference proved to be significant . . . (Crowley, 2006, p.
89)
Shortly after its inception, however, Division I was determined by the
membership to be too broad and encapsulated institutions that did not sponsor football,
and five years after the division was created representatives from the largest revenue
football playing institutions chose to further subdivide Division I into categories that
would ensure that the highest grossing schools would capitalize most from the revenues
they generated amongst themselves, especially among the growing television income
(Crowley, 2006, Gurney, e.al., 2017). A 1978 amendment at the NCAA convention was
passed by the association’s membership to split Division I into additional subcategories,
Division I-A (the largest revenue football institutions), who could compete for post-
season bowl eligibility, and Division I-AA (all other Division I football playing
members), who would compete in a post-season tournament to determine a national
champion at that level (Crowley, 2006). In 2006, the Division I subdivisions were
renamed, and Division I-A became Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) and Division I-AA
became Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) (Gurney, et al., 2017; NCAA, 2017).
31
Psychological Benefits of Intercollegiate Athletics
Qualitatively, researchers have explored issues as diverse as the psychological
benefits that athletics may have on undergraduate students, the effect that athletics has on
the perception of institutional reputation for colleges, the escalation of commitment on
athletic spending, and the perception of university presidents on the role of athletics at
their institutions (Bouchet, 2011; Briody, 1996; Huffman, 2013). The attitudes and
perceptions of college presidents, undergraduate students, faculty, fans, and other
stakeholders is that intercollegiate athletics fills an important need in higher education,
one that brings together the university community to support shared experiences and act
as a marketing tool for the school (Basten, 2002; Briody, 1996; Bouchet, 2011; Brunet,
2010; Estler & Nelson, 2005; Huffman, 2013).
Psychological qualitative studies typically focus on the communal aspects of
intercollegiate athletics and the psychic roles that game days have on the undergraduate
experience (Frank, 2004; Kelly & Dixon, 2011; Kim, 2010; Lanter & Blackburn, 2015;
Warner, Shapiro, Dixon, Ridinger, & Harrison, 2011). Frank (2004) noted that
intercollegiate athletics events provide shared spaces where divergent student groups
come together for common experiences. Other psychological research linked athletic
success to retention by examining the social integration factor that athletics creates within
a university (Harshaw, 2009). Lanter and Blackburn (2015) examined the relationship
between men’s basketball success and student self-esteem and found that students who
had a connection to athletics experienced an increase in self-esteem following a period of
athletic success. Another common theme of qualitative studies was that intercollegiate
32
athletics is the front porch of the university and has a dynamic marketing effect that
cannot be removed from the typical college experience because institutional reputation is
directly related to the perceived prestige of the institution and the athletic success it
achieves (Cross, 1999; Lifschitz, Sauder, & Stevens, 2014).
Overall, the findings presented in the qualitative research indicated that there is an
emotional and psychological benefit for a university to support a winning athletic
program. The challenge with using these qualitative findings to direct institutional
spending policy is that the conclusions are based primarily on opinions and perceptions
of the importance of athletics rather than data or more scientific methods of study.
Institutional Spending and Athletic Success
The links between institutional spending and athletic success have been explored
by a number of researchers with the purpose of finding the relationship between financial
investments in sports and the level of sports success schools can expect with increased
athletic budgets (Jones, 2013; Lawrence, Li, Regas & Kander, 2012; Litan, Orszag &
Orszag, 2003; Orszag & Israel, 2009;). Litan et al. (2003), as part of their broader
empirical study of the overall effects of athletic success on institutional outcomes, used a
cross sectional time series panel data set and fixed effects model to explore data from
1993 to 2001 and found that there was no statistically significant relationship between
financial spending and on-field outcomes at Division I FBS schools (Litan et al., 2003).
The authors concluded that their model “. . . suggests no statistical relationship between
changes in operating expenditures on football and changes in football winning
percentages between 1993 and 2001 . . .” (Litan et al., 2003, p. 4).

33
Orszag and Israel (2009) performed a similar study to Litan et al. (2003) on big-
time FBS schools using data from 2004 to 2007 and found a small, statistically
significant, relationship between institutional financial investment in athletics and on-
field success, whereby an investment of approximately $1 million additional dollars into
a school’s football program was estimated to improve an FBS football team’s chances of
winning by approximately 1.8 percentage points (Orszag & Israel, 2009). The finding,
however, was localized only to additional spending on team expenditures such as
recruiting, travel and equipment, and there was no significant relationship between
coaching salaries or scholarships and a team’s winning percentage (Orszag & Israel,
2009). Furthermore, the authors found that the same effect was not seen when applying
the same spending to the other traditional revenue sport, men’s basketball (Orszag &
Israel, 2009).
Lawrence, Li, Regas and Kander (2012) investigated the predictors of athletic
success by exploring National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA)
Directors’ Cup standings and the variables that contribute to institutional rankings in that
measure. The researchers chose to examine the Cup standings because the NACDA
Director’s Cup is an overall athletic department competition that judges athletics success
in a broader scope than just football and men’s basketball on-field success (Lawrence, Li,
Regas & Kander, 2012). Using a stepwise regression analysis, the researchers found that
there were statistically significant relationships between institutional financial
investments in women’s sports and non-gender specific areas (such as administrative
costs, marketing costs, athletic training equipment, and facility costs) and overall athletic
34
success as judged by the Director’s Cup standings (Lawrence et al., 2012). The findings
of this study indicated that overall athletic success, as judged by NACDA Director’s Cup
standings, were more positively impacted by financial investments in women’s sports and
administrative costs than in men’s sports like football and basketball, which were
findings different from similar studies that defined athletic success through FBS football
and men’s basketball only (Lawrence et al., 2012).
Jones’ (2013) fixed effects regression analysis of the relationship between athletic
department expenditures and overall athletic department on-field success found that there
was a strong correlation between institutional financial investment in athletics and on-
field performance among top level Football Bowl Subdivision institutions but not at
lower levels of Division I athletics (Jones, 2013). The findings of the study suggested
that FBS level athletic programs could expect to see a 1.08 point increase in Director’s
Cup standings for every additional 1% invested into their athletic programs, but FCS
level institutions saw no such increase as a result of additional financial investment
(Jones, 2013). The author suggested that the finding of a relationship between spending
and winning at the FBS level, but not at all other levels of Division I, might be a result of
how spending increases are applied at each level of Division I athletics. Jones suggested
that at FBS institutions the spending can be directly applied to areas that have been
shown to aid in winning, such as recruiting, whereas at non-FBS schools the spending
increases are more likely to be used to fund “. . . areas not directly related to competitive
success, such as administrative costs or increasing the number of student athletics
participating in intercollegiate athletics . . .” (Jones, 2013, p. 602).

35
Overall, the relationship between institutional athletic spending and athletic
success at the highest level of collegiate sport were inconclusive. Litan et al. (2003) were
unable to find a relationship in spending and athletic success using panel data from 1993-
2001, while Orszag and Israel (2009) were able to find a small positive effect of
increased spending for football programs. Lawrence, et al. (2012) found that only
spending on non-revenue and women’s sports showed to be significantly correlated with
higher rankings in the NACDA Director’s Cup standings, while Jones (2013) found that
there was a positive relationship between spending and Director’s Cup standings, but
only for FBS level teams and not at the lower levels of collegiate athletics. Multiple
studies of this relationship at the FCS level have not been undertaken, and therefore that
relationship is still relatively unknown with the exception of Jones’ (2013) findings.
Athletic Success and Student Test Scores
Beyond linking athletic spending and athletic success, a number of studies have
sought to find the relationship between on-field athletic success and student academic
outcomes. As universities look to attract the highest quality students, athletics is often
promoted as a way to increase the quality of students, specifically with regards to
incoming freshman standardized test scores (Litan, Orszag & Orszag, 2003; McCormick
& Tinsley, 1987; Tucker & Amato, 1993). One of the earliest studies on the impact of
athletics success on student applicant quality was McCormick and Tinsley’s (1987)
ordinary least squares analysis of the relationship between the presence of intercollegiate
athletics and student test score quality at the Division I level using data collected between
1971 and 1984. Using participation in major athletics as the unit of measurement, and
36
controlling for all other institutional factors, the researchers found that schools that
competed in high level Division I athletics had an undergraduate student population with
higher overall SAT scores than schools that competed at lower levels or did not compete
in intercollegiate athletics at all (McCormick & Tinsley, 1987). The researchers also
found that there was a marginally significant relationship between an increase in an
institution’s football winning percentage and overall student SAT scores, which they
suggest as evidence that athletic success “. . . is associated with academic quality . . .”
and that there “. . . is evidence of a symbiotic relation between athletics and academics on
many college campuses . . .” (McCormick & Tinsley, 1987, pp. 1007-1008). The
author’s suggested that athletic success could have an advertising effect for an institution,
thus increasing the number of total applicants, and therefore allowing schools to become
more selective in their admissions process (McCormick & Tinsley, 1987).
Litan, Orszag, and Orszag (2003) published an interim report commissioned by
the NCAA that examined the relationship between athletic success and a large number of
institutional outcomes, including incoming student test scores. The researchers collected
data from a number of sources, including the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act (EADA)
database and the Integrated Post-Secondary Education Data System (IPEDS) database,
for all Division I-A (FBS) schools for the period of 1993 to 2001 (Litan, Orszag &
Orszag, 2003). Using a fixed effects model to control for unobserved institutional
variables, the researchers found that there was no statistically significant relationship
between a Division I school’s spending on football or men’s basketball or and freshmen
student SAT test scores (Litan et al., 2003). Furthermore, they also found that there was
37
no statistically significant relationship between changes in a football team’s success and
average incoming freshmen SAT scores (Litan, et al., 2003).
Frank’s (2004) empirical study explored the links between athletic success,
student quality, and institutional donations, and specifically tried to make sense of the
divergent conclusions apparent in the body of existing research on the subject.
Reviewing earlier literature on the subject, the researcher observes that earlier studies
such as those by McCormick and Tinsley (1987), Tucker and Amato (1993), Murphy and
Trandel (1994), Mixon (1995) and Toma and Cross (1998), were only able to show small
statistically significant changes in SAT scores for incoming freshmen if schools achieved
very high measures of athletic success (Frank, 2004). Frank concluded that the increases
in applications at Division I schools are generally not worth the increased costs to achieve
those increases, and notes that returns on investment for
. . . a big-time athletic program might be a cost-effective means of expanding the
applicant pool if a highly visible winning program could be launched at moderate
expense. But as we have seen, even the cost of fielding a losing program is
extremely high and growing rapidly . . . (Frank, 2004, p. 28)
Of the mixed findings he found in previous studies, Frank noted that the field of college
athletics is a zero-sum game, and for every school that ends its season winning a
championship or finishing in the top-20 of the post-season rankings, there are schools that
do not win or finish outside of the rankings and therefore suffer the corresponding
downward movements in institutional attractiveness (Frank, 2004).

38
Mixon, Trevino, and Minto’s (2004) exploration of the relationship between
athletics and test scores found that academically selective institutions were able to
enhance the quality of their student populations as a result of successful athletic
programs. Using data collected for just the 2000-2001 academic year from Division I-A
(FBS) institutions, the authors found that football success was significantly positively
correlated with an increase in the quality of incoming freshmen classes as measured by
median SAT scores (Mixon, Trevino & Minto, 2004). The findings of this study built on
the earlier findings of McCormick and Tinsley (1987) and Mixon (1995) but were limited
to schools at the highest level of Division I competition.
Tucker (2005) examined data for major football institutions from the largest
Division I-A (FBS) conferences between 1990 and 2002 to test whether there was a
statistically significant relationship between football or men’s basketball on-field/on-
court success and improved SAT scores for incoming freshmen. The conferences chosen
were the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), Big 10, Big 12, Big East, Mountain West,
Pacific 10, Conference USA, Southeastern (SEC) and independent Notre Dame (Tucker,
2005). The researcher’s findings indicated that for every 10% increase in an FBS
football team’s winning percentage over a five year period, mean average SAT scores for
that institution would increase by 14 points (Tucker, 2005). An additional relationship
was found between an institution’s appearance in a post-season bowl game or final top-
20 ranking during the same five year average would increase median average SAT scores
by 12 points (Tucker, 2005). Tucker’s research was limited to the highest levels of
Division I football participation, and the author noted that there was also a need to
39
segment out SAT scores for incoming freshmen into 25th and 75th percentiles to better
understand the relationship between athletic success and its effects on applicant quality,
not just overall institutional mean average SAT score increases (Tucker, 2005).
The relationship between mens basketball success and student test scores was
investigated by Tucker and Amato (2006), with the purpose of exploring whether a
university’s financial investment in men’s basketball is correlated with incoming
freshmen SAT test scores. Using the same major conference schools examined in
Tucker’s (2005) earlier research, and defining basketball success as appearances in the
NCAA post-season basketball tournament, the researchers found a statistically significant
lagged relationship between basketball success and average incoming freshman SAT
scores during the period 1993-1997, but failed to find the same relationship during the
period of 1998-2002 (Tucker & Amato, 2006). The authors noted that the relationship
between basketball success and student quality is short lived and can be seen moving in
both directions, as student quality drops when athletic success fades (Tucker & Amato,
2006). Using a fixed effects model to control for conference affiliation, the authors also
found that being associated with one of the largest FBS conferences, the Bowl
Championship Series (BCS), had a statistically significant positive relationship with
student academic measures and incoming freshmen test scores (Tucker & Amato, 2006).
Smith (2008) looked at men’s basketball success and its relationship to incoming
freshman applications and test scores by analyzing all Division I men’s basketball
playing schools during the period of 1994 to 2005. With 75th percentile SAT scores as
the dependent variable (the highest range of incoming freshmen scores) the researcher
40
found that general basketball success, such as winning seasons or postseason
appearances, and playing the Final Four have no statistically significant correlation with
incoming student test scores, but that having a breakout season of unexpected success
raises incoming SAT scores by 8.86 points (Smith, 2008). Smith’s study included all
Division I men’s basketball-playing institutions, which covered a broader set of schools
than studies focusing specifically on FBS football schools alone.
Smith’s (2009) follow up study examined the relationship between participation
in Division I football and incoming freshman applications and test scores. Specifically
the researcher collected data for the period of 1994 through 2005 for 235 institutions that
competed at both the FBS and FCS level of Division I, and explored the effect that
athletic success had on the top 75th percentile SAT scores for the incoming freshman
class the following year (Smith, 2009). The findings of the study demonstrated that the
yearly success of the football team, either the winning percentage or postseason bowl or
championship game appearances, had no statistically significant impacts on incoming
student SAT scores (Smith, 2009). Instead, Smith found that the historical successes of a
football playing school mattered more to increasing SAT scores than does winning. For
each year a school has played football, what the researcher labeled ‘tradition’, the
average SAT scores increased by 0.83 points, and for every book written about the
football program, or the football culture of the school, the average SAT score was found
to rise by 2 points (Smith, 2009). The conclusions of the study point to a tradition of
football or a culture of football at a school playing a more important role in increasing the
41
quality of applicants than in short term investments in winning games or participation in
post-season bowls and championships.
Pope and Pope (2009) found that athletic success had a statistically significant
impact on SAT-sending rates for potential freshman students, but that students scoring
below 900 in the SAT test reacted to sports success at twice the rate of the higher scoring
students (Pope & Pope, 2009). Schools that won the NCAA basketball tournament, the
researchers found, saw an 18% increase in the number of SAT scores sent by students
with less than 900 cumulative on the test, a 12% increase in scores between 900 and
1100, and an 8% increase in high scores above 1100 (Pope & Pope, 2009). The findings
of this research suggest that athletic success does not just impact interest from low
achieving students as determined by test scores.
Lee’s (2012) dissertation explored the relationship between winning athletic
programs and student admissions profiles at small and medium sized, private, NCAA
Division I institutions in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC). The
researcher found that institutions within the MAAC that witnessed athletic success
realized an increase in applications and an overall increase in SAT scores following their
championship seasons (Lee, 2012). However, Lee found that when compared to the rest
of the MAAC conference, the champion institution often did not witness increases in
SAT scores that were significantly greater than the non-champion institutions (Lee,
2012).
Chung (2013) explored the dynamic advertising effects of collegiate athletics on
student applicant quality by examining the “stock of goodwill” that athletics could bring
42
to a university and influence students to apply (Chung, 2013, p. 13). The stock of
goodwill and advertising effect, notes Chung, has a diminishing effect, and the further
away from the athletic success the lower the goodwill should be observed on applicant
quantity and quality (Chung, 2013). Using a fixed effects discrete choice model Chung
found that athletic success had a residual long term effect on student applicant quality,
but that students with lower SAT scores tended to have a stronger preference for schools
with athletic success (Chung, 2013). The findings of this study also showed that the
decay rate for athletic success was highest among students with the lowest SAT test
scores, indicating that intercollegiate athletic success has a fleeting positive effect on
students unconcerned with the academic reputation of an institution (Chung, 2013).
Overall, much like the relationship between athletic spending and athletic success,
the literature is not conclusive about the relationship between athletic success and student
test score quality. Generally, however, most researchers agreed that there is a small
positive relationship between institutional athletic spending and the test scores of
freshmen student applicants.
Athletic Success and Admissions Applications
Similarly to student test score quality, researchers have examined the relationship
between athletic success and student applications to universities. This relationship is
especially important for schools that promote the athletic department as the front porch of
the university and expect athletic success to act as a marketing tool for increased
awareness of the institution (Bass, Schaeperkoetter, & Bunds, 2015; Chung, 2013).
43
Murphy and Trandel (1994) examined the relationship between an institution’s
football record and the size of its applicant pool. Using a fixed-effect model to control
for changes of time and other institutional specific factors, the researchers used data for
55 schools within the largest six major college football conferences at the time, the
Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), Big 8, Big 10, Pacific Ten, Southeastern (SEC) and
Southwest, over the period of 1978 to 1987, the researchers measured football success as
a team’s winning percentage within its own conference and total number of applicants to
the university (Murphy & Trandel, 1994). The findings of the research indicated that
schools with success on the football field (a 0.250 improvement in overall record) saw a
statistically significant, moderately positive, effect on total applications to the university
(1.3% total increase) (Murphy & Trandel, 1994). The authors concluded that the long
term impact of successful football programs was only weakly correlated with sustained
application increases (Murphy & Trandel, 1994).
Toma and Cross’s (1998) exploratory study analyzed the effect that winning a
Division I national championship during the period of 1979 and 1992 in football or men’s
basketball had on the quantity and quality of undergraduate admissions at the
championship institutions. Using only the championship institutions as their sample, the
researchers found that of the 16 schools that had won or shared championships at college
football’s Division I-A (FBS) level, 14 demonstrated an increase in the number of
applications received by first time freshmen, some as high as 20% or more (Toma &
Cross, 1998). For men’s basketball, ten of the thirteen championship institutions during
the period of study saw increases in applications following the championship seasons, but
44
the effect was much lower than for football championships and there was only one school
with an increase of more than 10% observed in the study (Toma & Cross, 1998).
Furthermore, the findings of the study indicated that there was a sustained effect of
increased applications due to athletic success, and that schools could be more selective
due to the increased number of available student applications (Toma & Cross, 1998). In
their conclusions, the authors speculated that the school’s national championship
visibility may lead to students spreading a wider net when searching for colleges to
attend, but may not result in a noticeable impact in the choice phase of student school
selection (Toma & Cross, 1998).
Goff’s (2000) review and extension of empirical assessments of the effects of
athletic success and institutional outcomes found that athletic success, particularly a
significant improvement in an athletic program, can significantly increase the national
exposure, or advertising effect, of a university regardless of the academic reputation of
the school (Goff, 2000). Goff examined previous studies by McCormick and Tinsley
(1987), Bremmer and Kesserling (1993), Tucker and Amato (1993) and Mixon (1995),
and then assessed the effects of athletic success at Wichita State, the University of Texas
at Arlington, and Georgia State University to finds that football participation and success
has a strong impact on overall applications (Goff, 2000). Furthermore, the author
concluded that major achievements in athletics, such as trips to post-season bowl games
or participation in the NCAA post-season basketball tournament appear to spark
additional interest in institutions by potential students through increased numbers of
applications (Goff, 2000). Conversely, Goff found that negative publicity such as
45
institutional athletics sanctions or other penalties offset any gains made by athletic
success, but do not decrease positive gains at a faster rate than those gains are earned
through athletic achievements (Goff, 2000).
McEvoy’s (2005) study of the relationship between athletic team performance and
undergraduate admissions applications at Division I-A (FBS) level institutions between
1994 and 1998 found that there was a significant positive relationship between a school’s
football winning percentage and the number of total applicants to that school in the
identified year and subsequent year (McEvoy, 2005). Following the model employed
earlier by McCormick & Tinsley (1987) and Murphy and Trandel (1994), McEvoy
defined the independent variable of athletic performance as the change in winning
percentage from year to year, and the dependent variable of total applications received by
the institution, and the author applied ANOVA tests on the data to generate results
(McEvoy, 2005). The positive relationship between athletic team performance and
increased applications was observed to exist only with football, and was not seen in other
revenue sports like men’s basketball, or in high profile women’s sports like basketball or
volleyball (McEvoy, 2005). McEvoy’s research was limited to 62 schools in the six
major Division I-A (FBS) conferences during the period studied, and was not undertaken
at the Division I-AA (FCS) level (McEvoy, 2005).
Pope and Pope (2009) used a comprehensive dataset of approximately 330
Division I schools from 1983 to 2002 to explore the impact of sports success and its
relationship on the number of applications received by institutions. Using panel data and
a fixed effects regression model, the researchers found that schools that competed in the
46
NCAA men’s basketball tournament could see an increase in applications of
approximately 1% the year following their appearance, with schools making the Final
Four seeing a higher increase of 4-5% and championship teams seeing a 7-8% increase
(Pope and Pope, 2009). For football, the effects of a top 20 ranking at the end of the
season resulted in a 2.3% increase in applications, while a championship season resulted
in a 7-8% increase in applications (Pope & Pope, 2009). Both findings experienced a lag
effect, with the positive effects dropping off significantly within two years and being
virtually non-existent in three years following a championship (Pope & Pope, 2009).
Castle and Kostelnik’s (2011) examination of the Division II Pennsylvania State
Athletic Conference (PSAC) had mixed results about the relationship between athletic
success and admissions outcomes, and found that there was not a significant correlation
between an athletic program’s winning percentage or overall conference standing and an
increase in freshman applications or student quality (Castle & Kostelnik, 2011). Their
research also found that there was no positive effect on admissions applications and
student quality of successful football and men’s basketball programs at the Division II
level, which was one of the only positive quantitative correlations found at the Division I
FBS level by previous researchers like Mixon, Trevino and Minto (2004) and Pope and
Pope (2009) (Castle & Kostelnik, 2011).
In a follow up to their earlier study, Pope and Pope (2014) used a unique dataset
culled from the College Board that recorded the colleges and universities that high school
students sent their SAT scores to during the period of 1994 and 2001 to determine if
athletic success factored into student application decisions. Unlike most of the other
47
studies that use mean SAT data gathered from EADA institutional reporting, the College
Board dataset allowed the researchers to explore individual student level decision
making, and provided demographic information for the students sending their test scores
to colleges (Pope & Pope, 2014). Athletic success was determined by examining schools
that had participated in the Division I men’s basketball tournament or whose football
team was ranked in the NCAA Division I-A national poll (Pope & Pope, 2014). By
substituting the SAT score submission as a proxy for an application, and using a fixed
effects model controlling institution-specific unobserved heterogeneity, the researchers
found that there was a statistically significant increase in the number of students who sent
their SAT scores to schools that had recently performed well in football or men’s
basketball (Pope & Pope, 2014). For schools that participated in the NCAA men’s
basketball tournament, the researchers found that there was an increase in sent SAT
scores of between 2% and 11% the following year depending on how far the team
advanced in the tournament (Pope & Pope, 2014). Top 20 ranked football teams were
also determined to be related to an increase in sent SAT scores, with increases of 2% to
12% the following year (Pope & Pope, 2014).
Roufagalas and Byrd (2014) explored the effects that unexpected and expected
athletic success had on student applications by segmenting out schools that invest in
permanent, sustained athletic success from those that experience one-time, fleeting
athletic success. The segmentation, they argued, is a key point of discussion for
university leadership as schools that experience unexpected one-time success might
consider funding athletics in an attempt to replicate that success in a similar way as

48
schools that invest in permanent, sustained athletic success (Roufalagas & Byrd, 2014).
The findings of the study demonstrated that unexpected athletic success was shown to
have a statistically significant negative relationship to freshman applications relative to
the expected total number of applications in both the year following the athletic success
as well as in the following year, with applications for schools dropping by approximately
4% in the first year and 2% in the following year (Roufagalas & Byrd, 2014). The
researchers concluded that it is not advantageous for schools to invest financially in
chasing one-time success if they hope to see an increase in their applications (Roufagalas
& Byrd, 2014).
In his study of the relationship between winning Football Bowl Subdivision
athletic programs, alumni giving, and academic reputation and admissions measures,
Anderson (2016) concluded that winning at the highest level of college sports had a
positive impact on all of the variables studied. Using a propensity score design to more
accurately value expected wins and losses, the conclusions of the study indicated that an
improvement of three wins for an FBS football program had an economically significant
effect on total applications to an institution (an average increase of 3.6%), admissions
acceptance rates (selectivity increased by 1.3%), and an improvement in average SAT
scores for incoming freshman (0.2%) (Anderson, 2016). The findings, however, were
applicable only to FBS institutions competing at the highest level of intercollegiate
athletics, and the researcher noted in his conclusions that it was difficult to know how
investing in athletics was related to winning programs because “. . . we do not know the
causal relationship between team investments and team wins . . .” (Anderson, 2016, p.
49
130). Linking his findings to the earlier research of Orszag and Israel (2009), who found
that FBS athletic departments invested approximately $1 million to obtain one additional
football win, Anderson states that according to his model each $1 million investment in
athletics would yield just a fraction of the total impact seen from three additional wins,
and then concluded that those “ . . . effects seem too modest by themselves to justify the
additional expenditures . . .” (Anderson, 2016, p. 130).
As can be seen by the studies exploring the links between athletic success and
institutional enrollment outcomes, many quantitative studies have examined at individual
university case studies, using samples of schools within one athletic conference or
examining one division of college sports, like all of Division I football programs, during
a narrow time frame, typically less than a decade (Castle & Kostelnik, 2011; Murphy &
Trandel, 1994; Perez, 2012; Peterson-Horner & Eckstein, 2015; Toma & Cross, 1998;
Tucker & Amato, 2006). Broad meta-analytical studies on the subject of athletic success
and academic outcomes typically do not try to apply the same framework onto well-
funded athletic schools such as Alabama and small, poorly funded athletic programs
typical in the NCAA’s Division III. Only a handful of meta-analytical studies have
focused on the link between athletics and university outcomes (Orszag & Israel, 2009;
Pope & Pope, 2009; Pope & Pope, 2014). The meta studies concluded that there was
only a small benefit to producing a winning athletics program (mostly BCS level
Division 1 football) on the number of admissions a school received, the test scores of
students that applied, or the overall quality of its admitted students. Even then, the meta-
analytical studies generally concluded that athletic spending was not worth the financial
50
cost to the university in dynamic advertising effect to invest in trying to win bowl games
or national basketball championships (Orszag & Israel, 2009; Pope & Pope, 2009; Pope
& Pope, 2014).
Athletic Success and Financial Giving
Studies have also investigated the links between athletic success and institutional
fundraising and increased donations to the university, which are one of the other
significant outcomes that universities in today’s marketplace hope to exploit (Chung,
2015; Goff, 2000; Humphreys & Mondello, 2007; Stinson & Howard, 2008; Staurowsky,
2002; Stinson, Marquardt, & Chandley, 2012). Findings in this area were mixed, as
researchers have shown that at some schools the success of athletics increases the
financial contributions to athletics at the expense of giving to the institution, while at
lower levels of college sports the research showed that overall giving to athletics and the
university goes up when athletics teams are successful.
Proponents of ‘big time’ intercollegiate athletics have argued that strong athletic
programs increase an institution’s brand awareness and, therefore, its ability to attract
alumni donations, while opponents of athletic spending have argued that donations to
athletics are a drain of resources away from academic programs or that the contributions
could be better obtained through an increase in the quality of students and faculty at the
institution (Grimes & Chressanthis, 1994, McCormick & Tinsley, 1987; Rhoads &
Gerking, 2000; Stinson & Howard, 2004).
One of the earliest studies exploring the relationship between financial
contributions and intercollegiate athletics was performed by Coughlin and Erekson

51
(1984). Using attendance data, post season bowl participation, and winning percentage
as independent variables in a cross sectional study taken from the 1980 NCAA Division I
football season, the researchers conclude that all three variables are positively correlated
with increased monetary contributions to a school’s athletic program, but do not look at
the spillover effects of contributions or how those contributions impact the general giving
of alumni to the rest of the university (Coughlin & Ererkson, 1984).
Grimes and Chressanthis’ (1994) study examined the relationship between
athletic success and alumni contributions to the academic endowment of a representative
NCAA Division I institution, Mississippi State University. Using time series data and
controlling for alumni population, student enrollment, state appropriations, and per capita
income, the results of the study indicated that alumni contributions to the general
academic endowment were positively related to the overall winning percentage of the
athletic sports programs at the institution, while post season competition was not
significant (Grimes & Chressanthis, 1994). Furthermore, the study showed that
television appearances were positively correlated to contributions and that institutional
sanctions in the form of NCAA penalties result in slight reductions in overall giving to
the academic endowment (Grimes & Chressanthis, 1994).
Baade and Sundberg (1996) examined the athletic performance data for 167
college football teams during the period between 1973 and 1990 and found that appearing
in a postseason bowl game increased alumni giving between 40% and 54%. Using data
from multiple data sources, the researchers constructed a longitudinal panel data set
covering the longest period of time studied by researchers in the context of athletic
52
success and financial giving by donors. While postseason bowl appearances were
positively correlated with increases in donations, the researchers also concluded that
overall winning records for football and men’s basketball do not positively relate to
increases in overall giving, but NCAA basketball tournament appearances do (Baade &
Sundberg, 1996).
Rhoads and Gerking (2000) studied the role that successful intercollegiate athletic
programs had on donor contributions to universities during the period between 1986 and
1996. The researchers used a fixed effects analysis of panel data for 87 institutions and
found that athletic success had a positive impact on levels of alumni giving to universities
but did not result in a similar effect for other forms of donations to the university (Rhoads
& Gerking, 2000). The researchers also found that universities with longer traditions of
athletic success experienced a spillover effect of contributions from athletic success into
academic contributions from all sources, including alumni and non-alumni, but that this
relationship was weaker than the relationships schools found between student and faculty
quality and academic contributions (Rhoads & Gerking, 2000). The researchers
concluded that their findings supported the idea that
. . . year-to-year athletic success has an influence on voluntary contributions to
universities in support of education . . . as might be expected, (the data) indicate
that alumni appear to care more about the performance of the football and
basketball teams than do other types of donors . . . (Rhoads & Gerking, 2000, p.
254).
53
In a study of private liberal arts colleges at various levels of college athletics,
Turner, Meserve and Bowen (2001) examined how a school’s football success impacted
the giving behavior of traditional donors as well as former student-athletes of the
institution. Using institutional-level micro data from 15 institutions, including five from
the Division FBS level (Duke, Notre Dame, Northwestern, Rice, and Vanderbilt), four
from the Division I FCS Ivy League (Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton,
and Yale) and the remaining six from liberal arts colleges that compete at the Division III
level (Denison, Hamilton, Oberlin, Swarthmore, Wesleyan, and Williams), the
researchers examined ten years of donor behaviors during the period between 1988 and
1998 for the cohorts that entered the selected institutions as part of the 1976 cohort
(Turner, Meserve, & Bowen, 2001). The results of the fixed effects regression on the
panel data set found “no relationship of any kind between won-lost records in football
and general giving rates at either the Division IA universities that operate high-profile
programs or among the Ivies” (Turner, et. al., 2001, p. 821). The researchers did find,
though, that there was a relationship between athletic success and a decrease in general
giving to Division I private schools from non-athletes which they ascribed to the
assumption (perhaps erroneously) that “. . . winning football teams generate so much
revenue that they don’t need to make as large a gift as they would have made otherwise . .
.” (Turner, et. al., 2001p. 824). The finding that general giving by non-athletes at
Division I schools was depressed as football success increased supported the argument
that athletic success and donations crowd out general academic financial support for
universities.
54
Stinson and Howard (2004) explored the relationship between donor behavior in
relation to academic success and alumni giving for athletics and academic fundraising
efforts. Using the University of Oregon as a longitudinal case study during the period
between 1994 and 2002, the researchers examined how alumni financial support from
donors contributing more than $1,000 to the university’s Annual Giving Program was
impacted by the institution’s on-field athletic success (Stinson & Howard, 2004). The
authors concluded that there was a ‘crowding out’ effect on institutional academic giving
by athletic giving, whereby increases in athletic donations resulted in decreased in
academic donations (Stinson & Howard, 2004). Furthermore, the researchers found that
donors who traditionally only donated to academic endeavors were not impacted by
athletic success, while donors who were classified as athletic donors were heavily
influenced by athletic success and donors who split their contributions between the
athletic and the academic fundraising efforts of the university showed an increasing
preference for athletics contributions as athletic programs at Oregon improved (Stinson &
Howard, 2004). The researchers concluded that “. . . the role of athletic success in
influencing giving behavior needs to be further clarified, considering the susceptibility of
different groups to changing gift patterns based on athletic team success . . .” (Stinson &
Howard, 2004, p. 136).
Frank’s (2004) empirical study explored the links between athletic success and
alumni giving through institutional donations, and reviewed the body of earlier literature
on the subject. The researcher found that earlier literature on the subject was
inconclusive, as studies of the relationship between athletic success and alumni giving
55
demonstrated a number of various measured outcomes (Frank, 2004). Frank noted the
inconclusiveness within the very early literature by exploring how Siegelman and Carter
(1979) could not show a relationship between donations at football success at Division I
schools, that Brooker and Klastorin (1981) were unable to find a statistically significant
relationship between athletic success and alumni giving at the Division I level, and only
once they applied a fixed effects model could Siegelman and Brookheimer (1983) find a
statistically significant relationship between Division I football winning percentages and
direct donations to an athletics department (Frank, 2004). The author further argued that
a number of subsequent studies, such as Grimes and Chressanthins (1994), Baade and
Sundberg (1996), Rhoads and Gerking (2000) and Litan et al. (2003) were unable to
show a statistically significant positive relationship between athletic success and alumni
donations to an institution, and the Turner, Meserve, and Bowen’s (2001) findings
suggested at a statistically insignificant level that athletic success could even reduce the
amount that donors contribute to institutions for general purposes (Frank, 2004).
Pointing to the inconclusiveness of the literature, Frank concluded that schools should not
assume that financial investments in athletics, with the intended outcome of higher
achievement in football and men’s basketball, will yield higher alumni giving to the
institution, especially for purposes outside of athletics (Frank, 2004).
In a follow up to their 2004 study, Stinson and Howard (2010) explored the
specific impact that athletic success had on donors that traditionally split their financial
contributions between athletic and academic fundraising efforts. The researchers
collected data on contributions from donors making annual gifts of more than $1,000
56
from three institutions with varying degrees of athletic success (Stinson & Howard,
2010). The findings of this study showed that split donors donated more money on
average than did traditional donors making donations to athletics only, and that in the
long-term, split donors are retained by institutions for longer periods of time than are
donors who contribute solely to academics (Stinson & Howard, 2010). This research also
found that between 5% and 15% of donors who began as athletic donors expanded their
giving to the academic side of the university and became split donors (Stinson &
Howard, 2010).
To explore the crowding-out effect of athletic giving on academic giving, Koo
and Dittmore (2014) examined the athletic and academic giving patterns of 155 Division
I, II and III institutions. Using a fixed effects regression design with a panel dataset, the
researchers looked at data for a ten year period between 2002 and 2012 for athletic
success in football and basketball and that success on the institutional giving levels of
donors for both athletic and academic fundraising efforts (Koo & Dittmore, 2014). The
researchers found that for
. . . every 1% increase in football winning percentage in the previous year was
associated with an increase of approximately $452,000 in athletic giving. Also,
every $1 increase in the one-year lagged athletic giving was related to the current
dollars of athletic giving at the nearly same rate . . . (Koo & Dittmore, 2014,
p.11).
The findings of this study supported the assertion that athletics success has a positive
spillover effect from athletic giving to academic giving as opposed to a negative

57
crowding-out effect on academic financial gifts to universities, and align with the earlier
studies by Grimes and Chressanthis (1994), Rhoads and Gerking (2000) and Stinson and
Howard (2004, 2010) (Koo & Dittmore, 2014).
Athletic Success and Other Institutional Outcomes
Other university outcomes were also explored frequently in the literature. The
link between athletic success and university prestige, usually in the form of U.S. News
and World Report rankings, was a topic that has generated a lot of recent research
(Fisher, 2007; Fisher, 2009; Lifschitz, Sauder & Stevens, 2014; Lovaglia & Lucas, 2005;
Mulholland, Tomic & Scholander, 2014). Institutional reputation is an important metric
for universities in the marketplace, and the US News and World Report rankings is one of
the most widely disseminated rankings of colleges in the United States, specifically
among college-bound students and their families.
Lovaglia and Lucas (2005) examined whether or not having a high visibility
athletic program could increase the prestige of an institution’s academic programs. Using
data collected from 479 students about their perceptions of institutional prestige, the
researchers found that having a highly visible athletics program made students perceive
that the academic contributions of a school’s graduates seem more prestigious (Lovaglia
& Lucas, 2005). Confirming the findings of Lovaglia and Lucas, Mulholland, Tomic and
Sholander, (2014) found that intercollegiate football success increased an institution’s
peer assessment score as ranked by the US News and World Report College Rankings.
The researchers found that a one standard deviation point increase in football polling
votes has the same impact on peer assessment scores as did a 20 point increase on SAT
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75th percentile scores (Mulholland, Tomic & Scolander, 2014). Also confirming these
findings was the work of Lifschitz, Sauder and Stevens (2014) that examined the
relationship between athletic conference affiliation and institutional prestige through US
News and World Report rankings and found that athletic conference affiliation was
related to member institutions’ perceived academic status.
Once students were enrolled at institutions, Mixon and Trevino (2005) found that
there was a positive and significant relationship between an institution’s on-field football
success and freshmen retention and graduation rates. Using data from the 2000-2001
academic year for 78 members of Division I FBS football conferences, the researchers
performed an Ordinary Least Squares analysis and linear regressions and concluded that
the psychic benefits of athletics success helped the university achieve its academic
mission by offsetting the challenge and rigor of academic endeavors (Mixon & Trevino,
2005).
Challenging Mixon and Trevino’s findings, however, was the research of Lindo,
Swensen and Waddell (2012) which argued that both male non-athletes at the University
of Oregon were negatively impacted academically by successful athletic programs, and
increased alcohol consumption, decreased studying, and achieved lower overall grades
when athletic teams were experiencing success, but that these findings were limited to the
Fall semester in which the football team competed. The researchers concluded that the
negative relationship between athletic success and undergraduate athletic achievement,
especially among males, could partially explain the growing gap between male academic
achievement and female academic achievement on college campuses (Lindo, Swensen &
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Waddell, 2012). Taking Lindo, et al.’s model and applying it to Clemson University,
Hernandez-Julian and Rotthoff (2014) found that the opposite effect was seen, and that
female undergraduates were more sensitive to athletic success than were male
undergraduates. Their findings suggested that, along with Lindo, et al’s findings, while
athletic success at an institution could negatively impact the individual academic
performance of undergraduate students, the effects of a winning athletic program could,
overall, still benefit the academic reputation of the university (Hernandez-Julian &
Rotthoff, 2014).
Chung (2015) investigated the short and long term monetary effects of operating a
winning athletics program on institutions within Division I FBS during the period of
2003 to 2013. For the purposes of this study the researcher focused on the revenue
generating sports of men’s basketball and football to define athletic success because those
two sports received the most attention and had the largest chance of generating revenues
for schools in the study (Chung, 2015). Without considering school-specific
heterogeneity, Chung found that there was a positive correlation between winning FBS
football programs in institutional athletics revenue, a finding that was also observed to be
statistically significant when applying a dynamic panel data method to the data (Chung,
2015). The findings of this research also showed that larger, more established athletics
programs saw a linear relationship between football and basketball wins and an increase
in revenue generation while smaller programs only saw a linear relationship between the
two when they experienced unexpected championship wins or post-season appearances in
football bowl games (Chung, 2015). The relationship between winning and increased
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revenue, Chung concluded, is more stable for schools with a history of investment in
intercollegiate athletics at the highest level of FBS sport, while those without established
histories of high achievement can only expect to see revenue increases by winning at
unexpectedly high levels of FBS football and Division I men’s basketball (Chung, 2015).
De-Escalation of Commitment in Intercollegiate Athletics
As spending on athletics increases while state funding for higher education
declines, many schools find themselves in situations where they must justify their
continued financial investment in expensive Division I athletics programs. In the field of
management studies, the phenomenon whereby an organization commits financial
resources to a course of action that exceeds the boundaries of economic feasibility is
known as escalation of commitment, and persistence in such behavior can result in the
entrapment of the organization to a failing course of action (Hutchinson & Bouchet,
2014). Escalation of commitment theory has primarily been applied to public policy
decisions to understand why organizations or governments financially support failing
endeavors despite the observable realities that those endeavors come at a substantial
financial cost (Ross, 2003).
Escalation of commitment theory frames organizational decision-making as being
counterintuitive to traditional goal achievement within an organization, and notes that “. .
. individuals and organizations (are) prone to situations involving continued and
increased commitment to a failing project or course of action amidst the presence of
negative feedback . . .” that should push them in alternative courses of action (Hutchinson
& Bouchet, 1976, p. 348). As an organizational theory, commitment escalation theory

61
rests heavily on the work of Staw (1976) and Staw and Ross (1987, 1993), who originally
applied their work to businesses that failed to change course on failing courses of action,
and built on older escalation research that said the only way to shift away from a failing
path was to abandon the project entirely. Keil and Montealegre (2000), and later
Mahring & Keil (2008), instead created a four phase model of modified alternatives to
reduce commitment to a failing course of action, without complete abandonment of the
course of action or devastating shift in organizational direction (Montealegre & Keil,
2000; Mahring & Keil, 2008; Hutchinson & Bouchet, 2014). The four phases of the
commitment de-escalation model proposed by Montealegre and Keil (2000) included (a)
problem recognition, (b) re-examination of prior course of action, (c) searching for
alternative courses of action, and (d) implementing an exit strategy (Montealegre & Keil,
2000; Hutchinson & Bouchet, 2014).
Bouchet and Hutchinson (2010) noted that escalation of commitment within
athletics happens “. . . despite overwhelming evidence that the course of action is not
advantageous to the organization . . .” (Bouchet & Hutchinson, 2010, p. 272). In
collegiate athletics, the continued financial investment in Division I athletics coupled
with the declining revenue sources for institutional funding and the increased reliance on
student fees has created a situation that management theorists describe as permanently
failing organizations (Hutchinson & Bouchet, 2014). Furthermore, within Division I,
failing institutional strategies frequently manifest themselves in the forms of lack of
performance-based competitiveness, complications with conference alignment,
mismatched athletics and institutional values, and limited institutional integration of

62
student-athletes (Hutchinson & Bouchet, 2014). Hutchinson, Rascher and Jennings
(2016) noted that the “. . . overwhelming majority of universities acknowledged athletics
as a failing course of action due to the financial expense not providing a comparable
financial return, economic benefit, or otherwise spillover effect (e.g. increased
enrollment) . . .” (Hutchinson, Rascher, & Jennings, 2016, p. 75). A number of studies
have explored various aspects of institutional athletic escalation and its impact on
institutional outcomes such as enrollment and student quality.
Bouchet and Hutchinson’s (2010) case study on the escalation of commitment at
Southern Methodist University examined the university’s rationale for increasing
financial investments in its intercollegiate athletics program starting in 2006. The
researchers found through stakeholder interviews that the university administration
believed that “. . . boosting the institution’s name recognition would help meet their goals
of attracting quality students and increasing the endowment . . .” (Bouchet & Hutchinson,
2010, p. 279). The increased visibility was intended to boost the overall institutional
enrollment, improvement in student quality, and increase alumni giving through
contributions to the university’s endowment (Bouchet & Hutchinson, 2010). Senior level
university administrators specifically noted that “. . . it is important for us to keep up the
number of applicants to the school. This allows us to be more selective in admitting
students. We honestly feel football helps us in achieving the goal (of attracting students)
. . .” (Bouchet & Hutchinson, 2010, p. 282). The researchers concluded that Southern
Methodist University, by choosing a course of action of increased financial investment in
athletics with the goal of improving the school’s brand nationally in order to increase the
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size of its applicant pool and enrollment, was pursuing a path that would lead to
widespread institutional failure if the intended outcomes were not realized after the
investment had been made, or university leaders were unable to engage in an exit strategy
if the investment proved to be a failure (Bouchet & Hutchinson, 2010).
Bouchet and Hutchinson (2011) examined Birmingham-Southern University’s
move from NCAA Division I to Division III in 2006 and the school’s challenge of de-
escalating from the highest level of intercollegiate competition and into a less expensive
subdivision of college sports. Using qualitative interviews the researchers found that the
original reasons for the school’s move to Division I in 2001 had been pressure from a
select group of donors at the school to increase the university’s exposure through
qualifying for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament (Bouchet & Hutchinson, 2011).
University leaders acknowledged that the donors were “. . . disingenuous regarding the
reasons for undertaking the move (to Division I). The bottom line was we just could not
afford to participate at the Division I level. It didn’t work . . .” (Bouchet & Hutchinson,
2011, p. 270). Furthermore, school administrators believed that the move to Division I
would increase the college’s endowment and increase student enrollment, neither of
which outcome was seen by the school during their period in Division I (Bouchet &
Hutchinson, 2011). In fact, Birmingham-Southern’s president noted that the school
actually saw an increase in enrollment when it moved from Division I to Division III
(Bouchet & Hutchinson, 2011). Ultimately, the university had to frame the de-escalation
from Division I to Division III as an economic move for the university instead of an
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emotional one to ensure that external stakeholders would understand the school’s need to
make changes in its athletic department (Bouchet & Hutchinson, 2011).
In a 2014 follow up to their earlier studies of Birmingham Southern and Southern
Methodist universities, Hutchinson and Bouchet (2014) applied commitment escalation
theory in a collective case study among eight universities (Centenary College,
Birmingham-Southern College, Northeastern University, La Salle University, East
Tennessee State University, University of the Pacific, Long Beach State University, and
Vanderbilt University) that successfully achieved organizational de-escalation within
their intercollegiate athletics departments. In each case, the universities under study had
successfully re-classified down from Division I, removed their football program, or
significantly restructured their athletic department (Hutchinson & Bouchet, 2014). Using
a purposive multiple case study design, the researchers interviewed Presidents, Chief
Financial Officers, Chief Operating Officers, Provosts, Vice Presidents for Enrollment,
Vice Presidents of Administration, Vice Presidents for Finance, Faculty Athletic
Representatives, Athletic Directs, Senior Associate Athletic Directors, and Associates
Athletic directors at the schools in the study and found that the most prudent path to
organizational commitment de-escalation was to present organizational stakeholders with
objective data concerning the true costs of intercollegiate athletics and demonstrating a
timely exit strategy away from the failing path (Hutchinson & Bouchet, 2014).
Furthermore, the findings of this study confirmed that institutional leaders and
stakeholders are often caught between the emotional aspects of intercollegiate athletics
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and the rational versus irrational decision making processes involved with following a
failing path of organizational escalation (Hutchinson & Bouchet, 2014).
Dropping Intercollegiate Football and Institutional Enrollment
Goff (2000) studied the enrollment trends between 1960 and 1993 at two Division
I schools, Wichita State University and the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA), that
dropped their football programs and one Division I school that added football, Georgia
Southern University, to see if a relationship existed between enrollment and the existence
of a Division I football program. The University of Texas at Arlington dropped football
in 1986 and Wichita State dropped football in 1987, while Georgia Southern added
football in 1981. While controlling for general enrollment trends within all of higher
education, the researcher found that on average there was an approximately 600-student
decline relative to years at Wichita State and UTA when football was not present, and an
additional 500-student increase at Georgia Southern with football being added (Goff,
2000). While the conclusions of this study indicated a negative trend upon dropping
football, due to the limited number of institutions that have dropped Division I football
programs, the findings of Goff’s study were limited in the sense that it is based on just
two cases.
Toma (2003) examined the role that football played in higher education and
suggested that schools that emphasize football at the highest level, schools he refers to as
Football U, should see an impact on student admissions, campus culture, and alumni
support (Toma, 2003). The inverse, Toma argued, is that for schools that do not compete
at the highest levels of football, such as schools outside of the Division I-A FBS
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structure, football is “. . . rarely the window to understanding institutional life that
football Saturdays are at flagship state or large private universities . . .” (Toma, 2003, p.
23). The removal of football at these lower profile institutions, he argues, would have
little impact on those schools’ ability to attract new students (Toma, 2003).
Jones (2014b) used evidence from three universities, East Tennessee State
University, Saint Mary’s College of California, and Siena College, to examine freshman
application trends at schools that dropped their Division I FCS football programs in the
Spring of 2004. Using panel data from the three institutions, with comparable control
institutions added to the model, and employing a differences-in-differences model to help
create a quasi-experimental design for the small group of institutions, the researcher
found mixed results from the three institutions following the discontinuation of football
(Jones, 2014b). Applications at East Tennessee State University dropped in the first three
years after the elimination of football, but increased during the period of 2008 to 2010,
for an overall statistically insignificant increase of 5.8% during the period 2004 to 2010
(Jones, 2014b). In the immediate aftermath of dropping football, St. Mary’s college of
California saw an increase in total applications relative to its peer institutions, but then
saw a decline between 2006 and 2010, for an overall statistically insignificant decrease of
18.7% in applications during the period 2004 to 2010 (Jones, 2014b). At Siena College,
applications rose consistently in the years after football was eliminated at a rate higher
than peer institutions all the way through 2010, for a statistically significant increase in
applications of 13.2% during the period of 2004 to 2010 relative to peer institutions
(Jones, 2014b). In conclusion, Jones noted that “. . . evidence from this study of three
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institutions of higher education which dropped intercollegiate football after the 2003-
2004 season suggest that not fielding a football program does not correlate with a
statistically significant drop in freshmen admissions applications . . .” (Jones, 2014b, p.
108).
Hutchinson, Rascher and Jennings (2016) explored the entire population of
universities that had discontinued all levels of Division I football programs during the
period from 1981 to 2010 to examine the relationship between discontinuing football and
institutional outcomes, specifically addressing the relationship between discontinuing the
Division I football program and its effect on SAT scores for incoming freshmen and
university enrollment numbers (Hutchinson et al., 2016). The researchers found that
there was a statistically insignificant improvement in overall SAT scores and a
statistically insignificant enrollment growth for schools in the years following their
discontinuation of football (Hutchinson et al., 2016). While not conclusive, the results of
the study showed that discontinuing football programs had little statistically significant
positive or negative impact on the academic status of the institution (Hutchinson, et al.,
2016). These findings, the authors noted, were important because they challenge the
widely held belief among university administrators that the elimination of Division I
football will have negative consequences for university outcomes such as enrollment and
student quality (Hutchinson, et al., 2016).
Fixed Effects Modeling
When studying the relationship between athletic success and athletic spending on
institutional outcomes over time, the most appropriate model to apply to cross sectional
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time series panel data is a fixed effects regression. Fixed effects models are the most
common quantitative methods applied to research in this field, and have been shown to
best model the relationships between the predictor variables of athletic success and
athletic spending and the dependent variables most commonly studied such as
institutional enrollment, student applications, student quality, increased fundraising or
alumni support (Chung, 2013; Jones, 2013; Koo & Dittmore, 2014; Litan et al., 2003;
Murphy & Trandel, 1994; Pope & Pope, 2009; Pope & Pope, 2014; Siegelman &
Brookheimer, 1983; Tucker & Amato, 2006). Without employing a fixed effects model
to time series data, some researchers have overemphasized the importance of athletic
success on institutional outcomes because of the unobserved institutional-specific
characteristics that often influence the outcome of traditional linear or multiple
regressions, and only by controlling for institutional characteristics over time can true
relationships between athletic success or spending and institutional outcomes be truly
measured (Siegelman & Brookheimer, 1983).
Applying fixed effects models to the relationship between athletic spending and
success and institutional outcomes such as applications and incoming test scores has the
effect of significantly weakening the observed effects of athletic success (Roufaglas &
Byrd, 2014). Roufagalas and Byrd (2014) suggested that fixed effects modeling can deal
with unobserved school heterogeneity and take into consideration athletic-related
variables such as school tradition better than other models such as ordinary least squares,
which overestimate the effects of athletic success effects (Roufagalas & Byrd, 2014).
The authors noted that

69
. . . Murphy and Trandel (1994) using 1978-1987 data, show that a 0.250
increase in in-conference winning percentage is expected to increase
applications by 1.3% (statistically significant). Litan et al. (2003) find no
significant effects of either football spending or football winning
percentage upon SAT scores or upon acceptance rates, using 1993-2001
data . . . (Roufagalas & Byrd, 2014 p. 10)
Litan et al.’s (2003) study of the empirical effects of college athletics on the
university used a panel data set with year and institutional fixed effects to control for
unobserved heterogeneity within each institution and found no statistically significant
relationships between football spending and team winning percentages during the period
of 1993-2001 among Division I FBS schools. Orszag and Orszag (2005) employed a
fixed effects model to a panel data set consisting of all NCAA Division II institutions for
the period of 1993-2003. Like the earlier Litan et al. (2003) study, Orszag and Orszag
were unable to find any statistically significant relationships between institutional
spending on football and winning football programs (Orszag & Orszag, 2005).
In his examination of the relationship between intercollegiate athletic
expenditures and on-field athletic success, Jones (2013) used fixed effects modeling to
control for athletic department characteristics that did not change over time, such as
institution type (public/private), institutional location and institutional selectivity. The
researcher also accounted for year fixed effects in the model by controlling for yearly
trends which impacted all institutions during the period he studies, such as inflation and
national economic conditions (Jones, 2013).

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Summary
The challenge for a researcher in this field is negotiating the qualitative and
quantitative research, where the qualitative research firmly supports the position that
intercollegiate athletics plays an important role in growing and defining a university
while the quantitative research does not support a similar conclusion. After reading the
literature, there is a general awareness among university leaders that investing in athletics
is a risky proposition but one that some are willing to wade into because of the potential
advertising effect that a successful program could mean for their institutions.
Undergraduate students, university presidents and members of university boards see
athletics as an opportunity to attribute psychic benefits to, or hang their hats on,
something tangible.
Quantitative studies on the subject of athletics and its value to the university
tended to conclude that there is only a small measurable effect of athletic quality or
spending and positive university measurable outcomes (Hoffer & Pinchin, 2016; Orszag
& Israel, 2009). Any effect that is discovered is not universal, rather highly localized to
elite level athletics programs, short in duration, and is typically confined exclusively to
very high level athletic success such as BCS bowl participation or winning a national
basketball championship (Pope & Pope, 2009, 2014). Furthermore, quantitative studies
were mixed in their findings with many studies concluding that there was no noticeable
effect of successful athletics on the university at all; while others argued that athletic
success came at a price that is far too steep for sound budgetary decision making by
university leadership (Anderson, 2016; Orszag & Israel, 2009; Stinson, Marquardt, &
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Chandley, 2012). Additional studies even examined whether institutions saw any
enrollment impact from adding or completely eliminating athletics (specifically football)
from their school (Jones, 2014a; Jones, 2014b; Van Holm & Zook, 2016).
By focusing on one school, a small subset of schools within one conference, or
one collegiate division, the results of these quantitative studies can typically be
generalized to similar schools, conferences, or to members of similar athletic divisions.
By focusing on athletic programs that are aligned into groups, such as conferences or
collegiate athletic divisions, the researchers were able to explore trends among
institutions with similar goals and aspirations.
The dynamic marketing effect of intercollegiate athletics has been explored by
researchers who have argued that there is an increase in university brand awareness
thanks to successful intercollegiate athletics, and that this brand awareness translates into
increased applications and increased enrollment (Chung, 2013; Smith, 2008). The same
research, however, also finds that applicants who are encouraged to apply to schools
because of athletic success are much less academically inclined, and that the advertising
effect of college athletics does not yield a significantly improved set of applicants in the
short or long term (Toma & Cross, 1998; Tucker & Amato, 2006).
The numbers, however, tell a different story. Investing in athletics has not been
definitively shown to increase applications or admissions to a university, and no
significant improvement in the student body as a whole (Pope & Pope, 2009; Pope &
Pope, 2014). Meta-analytical studies on the subject are mixed, and case studies show
there is very little positive effect at all, and whatever effect is seen is short lived and
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comes at a high cost for the institution (Lee, 2012; Murphy & Trandel, 1994; Perez,
2012; Peterson-Horner & Eckstein, 2015; Toma & Cross, 1998; Tucker & Amato, 2006;).
Since each university, athletic conference, and collegiate athletic division is unique in its
own ways, the quantitative and qualitative findings from research performed on other
institutions can be used as a guide but the unique outcomes of athletic spending at each
university must be examined individually to gauge the impact of athletic spending on
institutional outcomes
CHAPTER III
Methodology
Introduction
There have been few studies that have specifically examined the enrollment
impact of intercollegiate athletics on mid-major Division I schools, specifically schools
placed outside of the Power 5 Football Bowl Subdivision, and none since the Great
Recession of 2007-2008 and conference realignment that started in 2010. The problem
that was addressed in this study was the absence of an economic model that predicts or
demonstrates the relationship between athletic spending and FCS institutional admissions
outcomes in the period between 2003 and 2015. With increasingly limited funding for
higher education, college administrators must seriously examine the true economic
impact of intercollegiate athletics and the role college sports plays at their institutions.
There are a number of differences between large, well-funded, athletic programs at the
highest levels of intercollegiate athletics participation and mid-sized regional universities,
and therefore the role of athletics at these smaller schools must be examined separately
from the trends occurring at the highest levels of college sports.
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74
Purpose
The purpose of this cross sectional time series panel data fixed effects regression
analysis was to examine whether a relationship existed between institutional athletic
expenditures and total university applications, enrollments, and student quality at
institutions in the NCAA Division I FCS Southland Conference during the period
between 2003 and 2015.
Research Questions
The following research questions were addressed:
and 2015?
Research Design
The design for this study was a cross sectional panel data fixed effects regression
analysis with several control variables to investigate the relationship between institutional
athletic department expenditures, undergraduate enrollment and student quality at
Southland Conference member institutions during the period between 2003 and 2015. A
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fixed effects model was applicable to this research because the fixed effects control for
year-specific and school-specific unobserved heterogeneity, or where unobserved
correlations could exist due to the time series nature of, or in the cross sectional analysis
of, the data being studied (Allison, 2009).
Independent variables are those variables that probably cause, influence, or affect
outcomes, and are also sometimes referred to as treatment or predictor variables
(Creswell, 2003). In this study the independent variable that was examined was total
institutional athletic expenditures. The data for this variable were gathered from the
Equity in Athletics Data Analysis Cost Cutting Tool for the period being studied for all
institutions in the NCAA FCS Southland Conference.
Dependent variables are defined as the effect variables that receive influence from
the independent variable and are the observed outcomes or results (Creswell, 2003). The
dependent variables examined in this research included total applications received by an
institutions, total full-time undergraduate enrollment by Fall headcount, ACT composite
25th percentile, ACT Composite 75th percentile, SAT Critical Reading 25th percentile,
SAT Math 25th percentile, SAT Critical reading 75th percentile, and SAT Math 75th
percentile. All of the dependent variables were collected using the National Center for
Education Statistics Database’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System
(IPEDS) database.
Control variables were introduced into this model to better test for the relative
relationship of the dependent and independent variables being studied. Control variables
for this study were average nine-month full-time professor salary, total annual cost of
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attendance at each institution, number of high school diplomas given out by state, and per
capita income by state. Professor salary and cost of attendance data were gathered using
the National Center for Education Statistics Database’s Integrated Postsecondary
Education Data System (IPEDS) database. Data on the number of high school diplomas
awarded by state were collected from the National Center of Education Statistics database
and were linked by state to the colleges in the study. Data on per capita income by state
were collected from the United States Bureau of Economic Analysis and linked by state
to the colleges in the study. The control variables included in this study were the same
control variables employed by Pope and Pope (2009) in their fixed effects regression
analysis that examined the relationship between athletic success and the quantity and
quality of student applications, and the data sources are the same as those employed by
Litan, Orszag and Orszag (2003), Orszag and Orszag (2005) and Pope and Pope (2009) in
their earlier empirical studies on this subject.
Instrumentation
For the purpose of this study, student quality was assessed through mean average
SAT standardized test scores for incoming undergraduate students at the Southland
Conference member institutions being sampled. The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) is
an aptitude test administered to secondary students in years 11 or 12, and is divided into
two parts, the SAT Reasoning Test measuring reading, writing and quantitative skills and
the SAT Subject Tests measuring knowledge and reasoning ability in various subjects.
The SAT is scored on a scale from 200-800 in each of the two reading and writing and
math sections and there is an optional essay component scored on a scale of 2-8. The two
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part sum score out of a total of 1600 is what universities report to the Department of
Education for incoming undergraduate students (National Center for Education Statistics,
2016).
There is validity to using SAT standardized test scores to determine incoming
student academic quality because the United States Department of Education endorses
the SAT undergraduate level aptitude tests to determine students’ capability for
postsecondary study (U.S. Department of Education, 2016). Furthermore, for the purpose
of this study, all of the Southland Conference member institutions report SAT data to the
federal government and use standardized test scores to make admissions decisions about
incoming undergraduate students.
Sample
This study employed a sample of 17 institutions that were members of the
Division I FCS Southland Conference during the period between 2003 and 2015. The
population is a group of individuals, objects, or items from among which samples are
taken for measurement (Singh, 2007). This sample represented the entire population of
the Southland Conference during the period under study and includes schools that both
entered and left the conference during that time. According to Creswell (2003),
researcher’s access is a key element in research design that must be addressed during the
data collection process. Since the researcher had access to extensive datasets provided by
the United States Department of Education and Department of Labor Statistics, it was
possible to sample the entire population of the conference with relative ease. For the
purposes of this study, the time period and set of participants was chosen as it reflects a
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typical mid-major NCAA Division I conference during a shifting economic time period.
The schools in the study are regional comprehensive universities that were greatly
impacted by the great recession of 2007-2008 and many mid-major programs had their
funding called into question following the downward trends in state support after the
recession.
During the period under study the conference consisted of regional public and
private colleges and universities throughout Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Arkansas
with enrollments ranging from 2,000 to 13,000 students. The universities examined
included Abilene Christian University, Houston Baptist University, Lamar University,
McNeese State University, Nicholls State University, Northwestern State University,
Oral Roberts University, Sam Houston State University, Southeastern Louisiana
University, Stephen F. Austin State University, Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi,
University of Central Arkansas, University of New Orleans, University of the Incarnate
Word, Texas State University, University of Texas at Arlington, and University of Texas
at San Antonio.
Data Collection
Undergraduate enrollment data and SAT test score data were collected from
publicly available databases provided by the National Center for Education Statistics
Database’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data Center (IPEDS) and college
athletics spending information was collected from the Equity in Athletics Data Analysis
Cutting Tool through the Office of Postsecondary Education of the United States
Department of Education. Data on the number of high school diplomas awarded by state
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were collected from the National Center of Education Statistics and data on per capita
income by state were collected from the United States Bureau of Economic Analysis and
linked by state to the colleges in the study.
The IPEDS database provides basic data on postsecondary educational institutions
in the United States for use in determining trends in higher education such as student
enrollment, the number of employed faculty and staff, total number of degrees granted,
and budget expenditures (National Center for Education Statistics, 2017). IPEDS data
were collected by using the Compare Institutions feature on the website and selecting all
dependent variables for each of the institutions being studied for the time period of 2003
through 2015. The IPEDS Data Center produced a spreadsheet output for all of the
selected variables and years under study.
The Equity in Athletics Data Analysis Cost Cutting Tool was designed by the
Office of Postsecondary Education of the United States Department of Education as a
resource to provide customized reports for public inquiries regarding equity in athletics
data and consists of data collected annually as required by the Equity in Athletics
Disclosure Act (EADA) (US Department of Education, 2017). Similarly to the IPEDS
Data Center, EADA data were collected by using the Compare Data for Multiple Schools
feature on the website and selecting the independent variable for all of the institutions
being studied for the period between 2003 and 2015. The EADA Cost Cutting Tool
produced a spreadsheet output for all of the selected variables and years under study and
this spreadsheet data was merged with the existing output from the IPEDS data for the
dependent variables using STATA software.

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The National Center of Education Statistics is the federal entity responsible for
collecting, analyzing and reporting data and statistics related to education in the United
States (National Center for Education Statistics, 2017). NCES data was collected using
the Data Tools feature of the website to select all independent variables being studied for
the time period of 2003 through 2015. The NCES website produced a spreadsheet output
for all of the selected variables and years under study. This data was merged with IPEDS
and EADA data using STATA software.
The United States Bureau of Economic Analysis is the principal federal agency
responsible for promoting “. . . a better understanding of the U.S. economy by providing
the most timely, relevant, and accurate economic accounts data in an objective and cost-
effective manner . . .” (United States Department of Commerce, 2017). Per capita
income data was collected using the Bureau of Economic Analysis National Data GDP
and Personal Income database, and the website produced a spreadsheet output for the
selected variable and years under study. State income was merged into the larger dataset
by linking state codes with the institutions under study.
Data Analysis
Raw data were downloaded directly from the online historical archives of the
National Center of Education Statistics, the IPEDS database, the EADA database, and the
United States Bureau of Economic Analysis. The IPEDS, NCES and EADA sources
reported their raw data in continuous numerical format and uses unique institutional
UNITid identifiers to categorize data by individual college. The United States Bureau of
Economic Analysis data were coded by state to merge with the state codes from the
81
IPEDS and EADA data sets for each institution. All of the data sets were merged using
STATA software to match cases, using the UNITid identifiers and state codes, and
compile the data to ensure accuracy. Data were cleaned, and missing values were left
empty due to their low number and the possibility that inserting mean averages could
skew the research findings. Dummy variables were created for state and year, and a one
year lead and lag variables were created to test for future and lagged effects of the data.
The dataset was then exported in .csv file format for analysis through the STATA and
Microsoft Excel software programs.
STATA was also used to create summary statistics of the data, while Microsoft
Excel was used to create descriptive statistics. Descriptive statistics for institutional
athletic expenditures, undergraduate enrollment, and test scores was presented through
mean averages including mean spending for institutions over time, mean total
undergraduate enrollment over time, mean test scores for first time incoming freshmen
over time and mean total applications over time.
Fixed effects regression modeling was conducted using the STATA data analysis
and statistical software to test for relationships among the variables (Allison, 2009). The
researcher was specifically interested in the f-statistic and the beta coefficient present in
the data analysis outputs. The f-test describes whether the fixed effects model actually
explained anything in the data, or whether the model was a good fit for the data. The f-
test was a statistical test where the p-value for the test should be significant at a 5% level,
or lower than 0.05 in the data output. The beta coefficient of the independent predictor
variable and its effect on the dependent variables under study was the primary data point
82
of interest. The beta coefficient in a fixed effects model tells the researcher the direction
and strength of the relationship between the variables and allows the researcher to infer
how much of a change in the dependent variable can be expected with a change in the
predictor variable. As Bartels (2008) noted, in the case of time-series cross-sectional data
the interpretation of the beta coefficients would be “. . . for a given observation, as X
varies across time by one unit, Y increases or decreases by β units” (p. 6). The beta
coefficient of the predictor variable of institutional spending showed the relationships
between the variables of institutional athletic expenditures, undergraduate enrollment,
total applications and incoming freshmen test scores.
Summary
By itself, quantitative research does not guarantee validity or reliability of the
research, but does allow for a high level of objectivity when discussing the data and
findings (Borrego et al., 2009). The panel data fixed effects regression research design,
therefore, provided an objective approach to analyzing the data to determine if
relationships existed between the research variables. The fixed effects regression
research design was also helpful for determining the degree of the relationship between
institutional athletic expenditures, student quality, and undergraduate enrollments for the
given sample of Southland Conference schools (Cook & Cook, 2008). The data was
analyzed using software that is typically used by social science researchers to conduct
quantitative research and will help reduce subjectivity. Qualitative research techniques
were left out of the research design to reduce the subjectivity of the findings.
83
As the researcher was aware, the potential limitation of fixed effects regression
analysis is omitted variable bias, or a chance that the relationships between athletic
spending and the dependent variables under study could be correlated to variables that
were not seen by the researcher or controlled for in the regression model. Several control
variables as well as year and institutional fixed effects were included in the analysis, but
there was always a potential threat that uncontrolled characteristics could be correlated
with institutional athletics spending and could therefore lead to omitted variable bias in
this analysis. Another potential limitation of fixed effects was that this model could not
accurately capture the changes in school quality over time, and some schools within the
Southland Conference may have substantially improved their academic reputations
during the period of study. As Allison (2005) noted, however, “No matter how many
variables you control for, someone can always criticize your study by suggesting that you
left out some crucial variable” (p. 1).

CHAPTER IV
Findings
Introduction
The purpose of this analysis was to examine the relationship between the financial
investment in intercollegiate athletics and the enrollment, applications and student test
scores of schools situated in the Southland Conference, a mid-major NCAA Division I
athletic conference, during the period between 2003 and 2015. Specifically, the
researcher examined whether institutional athletics expenditures impact the number of
applications, enrollments or quality of applicants, as derived from incoming freshmen
standardized test scores, at each of the universities within the Southland Conference
during the time period under examination. By focusing specifically on enrollment,
applications and test scores in relation to athletics the Division I FCS level, the findings
below provide context for university leaders at similar institutions, and more specifically
those at Southland Conference member institutions, to begin discussing how to frame the
role of intercollegiate athletics at their institutions.
Data were collected from the National Center for Education Statistics Database’s
Integrated Postsecondary Education Data Center (IPEDS), the Equity in Athletics Data
Analysis (EADA) Cutting Tool through the Office of Postsecondary Education of the
84
85
United States Department of Education, the United States Bureau of Economic Analysis,
and the National Center for Education Statistics general database and analyzed using
descriptive statistics and fixed effects regressions. This chapter begins with a description
of the summary and descriptive statistics for the groups under study followed by
descriptions of the fixed effects regressions used to answer each of the three research
questions of this study.
The Stata Data Analysis and Statistical Software (STATA) package, version 9.2,
was used to run summary statistics and analyze the data in order to answer the three
research questions. Additional summary statistics and descriptive statistics were derived
using Microsoft Excel.
Descriptive Statistics
Descriptive statistics for total institutional athletic expenditures during the period
between 2003 and 2015 can be found in Table 1 below. In 2003 the mean for
institutional athletic expenditures for schools in this study was $4,913,199 and by 2015
that had increased nominally by $9,750,427 to $14,663,626, representing a total increase
in institutional expenditures of 198.45%. Only three schools, the University of New
Orleans, Southeastern Louisiana State University, and Oral Roberts, increased their
athletic budgets by less than 100% during this period. The three largest proportional
increases in spending, Houston Baptist University, University of the Incarnate Word, and
University of Central Arkansas, belonged to schools moving from Division II to Division
I membership during this period. The next two highest increases, UTSA and Lamar, each
added Division I football during this period.

86
Table 1
Descriptive Statistics - Total Expenses in the Southland Conference (2003-2015)
Total Expenses
Institution Name 2003 2015 $ Change % Change
University of Central Arkansasa $2,720,019 $11,997,465 $9,277,446 341.08%
McNeese State University $4,775,205 $11,291,974 $6,516,769 136.47%
University of New Orleansb $4,229,707 $5,137,842 $908,135 21.47%
Nicholls State University $3,473,481 $9,820,335 $6,346,854 182.72%
Northwestern State University $4,918,760 $11,557,256 $6,638,496 134.96%
Southeastern Louisiana
University $7,023,366 $13,494,250 $6,470,884 92.13%
Oral Roberts Universityc $7,411,517 $12,357,824 $4,946,307 66.74%
Abilene Christian Universityb $4,849,383 $12,894,219 $8,044,836 165.89%
Texas A&M-Corpus Christi $3,560,255 $10,313,499 $6,753,244 189.68%
Houston Baptist Universityb $2,090,700 $15,314,235 $13,223,535 632.49%
University of the Incarnate
Wordb $3,510,143 $17,985,309 $14,475,166 412.38%
Lamar University $4,330,423 $17,736,191 $13,405,768 309.57%
Sam Houston State University $5,416,735 $16,024,424 $10,607,689 195.83%
Stephen F. Austin State
University $5,899,527 $15,528,490 $9,628,963 163.22%
Texas State Universityd $8,639,749 $30,546,211 $21,906,462 253.55%
University of Texas Arlingtond $4,767,884 $11,457,556 $6,689,672 140.31%
University of Texas San
Antoniod $5,907,533 $25,824,562 $19,917,029 337.15%
Mean Average for All Schools $4,913,199 $14,663,626 $9,750,427 198.45%
a
UCA transitioned to Division I and joined the Southland Conference in 2006
b
UNO, ACU, HBU and UIW transitioned to Division I and joined the Southland Conference in 2013
c
Oral Roberts University was a Southland Conference member from 2012-2014
d
Texas State, UTA and UTSA moved to FBS conferences in 2012
87
Table 2 below shows the descriptive statistics for total undergraduate enrollment
of each institution in this study during the period between 2003 and 2015. The mean
average enrollment change was a net increase of 12.99% overall for all schools in the
study. The table shows that during this period eight institutions saw a net decline in total
undergraduate enrollment between 2003 and 2015 while nine schools had increases over
the same period. Five of the schools that experienced net enrollment losses are located in
Louisiana (McNeese, University of New Orleans, Nicholls State, Northwestern State, and
Southeastern State), two are located in Texas (Lamar and Abilene Christian) and one is in
Oklahoma (Oral Roberts). Of the nine schools with net increases, eight are located in
Texas (Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, Houston Baptists University, University of the
Incarnate Word, Sam Houston State University, Stephen F. Austin State University,
Texas State University, UT-Arlington, and UTSA), and one is located in Arkansas
(Central Arkansas). The largest real gains in total undergraduate enrollment were at
Texas State (9690), UTSA (4455), Sam Houston State (4378) and UTA (2871), three of
which were institutions that moved to FBS athletics in 2012.

88
Table 2
Descriptive Statistics – Total Undergraduate Enrolments in the Southland Conference

(2003-2015)
Total Undergraduate Enrollment

Institution Name 2003 2015 # Change % Change
University of Central Arkansas 8055 8235 180 2.23%
McNeese State University 6023 5775 -248 -4.12%
University of New Orleans 9598 4789 -4809 -50.10%
Nicholls State University 5304 4576 -728 -13.73%
Northwestern State University 6968 5016 -1952 -28.01%
University 11420 9568 -1852 -16.22%
Oral Roberts University 2947 2510 -437 -14.83%
Abilene Christian University 3877 3567 -310 -8.00%
Texas A&M-Corpus Christi 4820 7286 2466 51.16%
Houston Baptist University 1629 2115 486 29.83%
Word 2036 4238 2202 108.15%
Lamar University 6315 6314 -1 -0.02%
Sam Houston State University 9739 14117 4378 44.95%
Stephen F Austin State
University 8406 9413 1007 11.98%
Texas State University 17679 27369 9690 54.81%
University of Texas Arlington 13486 16357 2871 21.29%
Antonio 15584 20039 4455 28.59%
Mean Average for All Schools 7875.65 8899.06 1023.41176 12.99%
89
Table 3 below shows the undergraduate applications for schools in this study
during the period between 2003 and in 2015 and also breaks down the numbers into
gender groups for male and female undergraduate applications. In all three categories of
applications, the mean average for all institutions increased between 2003 and 2015. On
average there were 1,292 more male applicants per institution and an additional 2,188
female applicants per institution in 2015 than there were in 2003. The mean average of
total applications in 2015 was 3480 greater than in 2003, for an overall increase of
78.71%. Three institutions (the University of Central Arkansas, the University of New
Orleans, and Northwestern State University) experienced application declines from 2003
to 2015, while the largest increase was seen at Houston Baptist University where the
institution received 13,623 more applications in 2015 than it had in 2003, an increase of
1520.4%.
90
Table 3
Descriptive Statistics – Undergraduate Applications in the Southland Conference (2003-

2015)
Total Undergraduate Applications

#
Institution Name 2003 2015 Change % Change
University of Central Arkansas 5655 5063 -592 -10.47%
McNeese State University 2183 3002 819 37.52%
University of New Orleans 5467 3932 -1535 -28.08%
Nicholls State University N/A 2399 N/A N/A
Northwestern State University 4389 3231 -1158 -26.38%
University 3373 3718 345 10.23%
Oral Roberts University 1337 2339 1002 74.94%
Abilene Christian University 4011 10804 6793 169.36%
Texas A&M-Corpus Christi 3114 8909 5795 186.10%
Houston Baptist University 896 14519 13623 1520.42%
Word 1422 4050 2628 184.81%
Lamar University 4185 4529 344 8.22%
Sam Houston State University 5182 9242 4060 78.35%
University 5750 11382 5632 97.95%
Texas State University 11483 20711 9228 80.36%
University of Texas Arlington 5103 10777 5674 111.19%
Antonio 7184 15706 8522 118.62%
Mean Average for All Schools 4421 7901 3480 78.71%
91
Table 4 shows the descriptive statistics for incoming freshmen SAT Critical
Reading scores of each institution in this study during the period between 2003 and 2015.
On average the Critical Reading scores of schools in this study declined at both the 25th
and 75th percentile levels during the period under study. The mean average 25th
percentile score for Critical Reading declined by 18.75 points overall, from 461.75 in
2003 to 443 in 2015, and the 75th percentile score by 17 points overall, from 569.58 in
2003 to 552.5 in 2015. For schools with data from both 2003 and 2015, 10 out of 12
schools showed no change or a decline in SAT Critical Reading 25th and 75th percentile
scores while just two schools, Lamar and UTSA, showed small increases of 1.19% and
2%, respectively, at the 25th percentile level, and 2.32% and 4.2%, respectively, at the
75th percentile level. This data shows that incoming freshmen SAT Critical Reading
scores for schools in this study declined over the period between 2003 and 2015, but
more so at the 25th percentile level (the lower quartile) than at the 75th percentile level.
92
Table 4
Descriptive Statistics – SAT Critical Reading Scores in the Southland Conference (2003-
2015)
SAT Critical Reading SAT Critical Reading

25th Percentile Scores 75th Percentile Scores
Institution Name 2003 2015 Change 2003 2015 Change
University of Central Arkansas N/A 440 N/A N/A 540 N/A
McNeese State University N/A 440 N/A N/A 530 N/A
University of New Orleans 470 460 -2.13% 620 600 -3.23%
Nicholls State University N/A 440 N/A N/A 540 N/A
Northwestern State University N/A 420 N/A N/A 550 N/A
University N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
Oral Roberts University 480 453 -5.63% 600 550 -8.33%
Abilene Christian University 490 470 -4.08% 600 590 -1.67%
Texas A&M-Corpus Christi 430 430 0.00% 518 530 2.32%
Houston Baptist University 480 470 -2.08% 590 580 -1.69%
Word 440 430 -2.27% 550 530 -3.64%
Lamar University 420 425 1.19% 530 530 0.00%
Sam Houston State University 450 450 0.00% 560 550 -1.79%
University 470 440 -6.38% 560 550 -1.79%
Texas State University 490 460 -6.12% 580 560 -3.45%
University of Texas Arlington 470 400 -14.9% 580 540 -6.90%
Antonio 451 460 2.00% 547 570 4.20%
Mean Average for All Schools 461.8 443 -4.06% 569.6 552.5 -3.00%
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The descriptive statistics for incoming freshmen SAT Math scores for each of the
institutions in this study are shown below in Table 5. During the period between 2003
and 2015 the mean average SAT Math scores for all schools increased by 3.9 total points
at the 25th percentile level, a 0.85% increase, while declining by 0.625 points at the 75th
percentile level, a decrease of 0.11% overall. Six of the schools in the study showed
either a decline in SAT Math 25th percentile scores or no change at all, while six schools
showed increases, with the University of New Orleans having the largest 25th percentile
increase at 35 points (7.95%) and Oral Roberts the largest decrease at 20 points (-4.26%).
At the 75th percentile level, seven schools demonstrated an overall decrease in SAT
scores and five demonstrated increases. The largest increase for 75th percentile scores
was 40 points for the University of New Orleans (6.78%) and the largest decrease was 30
points for Texas State University (-5.08%).

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Table 5
Descriptive Statistics - SAT Math Scores in the Southland Conference (2003-2015)
SAT Math 25th Percentile SAT Math 75th Percentile

Scores Scores
Institution Name 2003 2015 % Change 2003 2015 % Change
University of Central Arkansas N/A 450 N/A N/A 570 N/A
McNeese State University N/A 470 N/A N/A 580 N/A
University of New Orleans 440 475 7.95% 590 630 6.78%
Northwestern State University N/A 450 N/A N/A 550 N/A
University N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
Abilene Christian University 490 480 -2.04% 610 590 -3.28%
Houston Baptist University 470 490 4.26% 600 570 -5.00%
Word 420 430 2.38% 550 530 -3.64%
Sam Houston State University 460 440 -4.35% 550 540 -1.82%
University 460 450 -2.17% 560 550 -1.79%
Texas State University 500 470 -6.00% 590 560 -5.08%
University of Texas Arlington 490 490 0.00% 600 610 1.67%
Antonio 457 470 2.84% 553 580 4.88%
456.
Mean Average for All Schools 4 460.3 0.85% 570 569.4 -0.11%
95
Table 6 below shows the descriptive statistics for incoming freshmen ACT
Composite scores for schools in this study during the period between 2003 and 2015.
Overall the mean average ACT Composite scores during this period increased at both the
25th percentile level and at the 75th percentile level by an average of 1.029412 points,
which was an increase of 5.56% at the 25th percentile level and 4.38% at the 75th
percentile level. Five schools at each percentile level saw no change in incoming
freshmen ACT Composite scores between 2003 and 2015. Only one institution, Oral
Roberts University, showed a decrease in scores in 2015 over where those scores had
been in 2003, declining at the 25th percentile level from 20 to 19 (-5%) and at the 75th
percentile level from 26 to 24 (-7.69%).

96
Table 6
Descriptive Statistics – ACT Composite Scores in the Southland Conference (2003-2015)
ACT Composite 25th ACT Composite 75th

Percentile Score Percentile Score
Institution Name 2003 2015 Change 2003 2015 Change
University of Central Arkansas 20 20 0.00% 26 26 0.00%
McNeese State University 17 20 17.6% 22 24 9.09%
University of New Orleans 18 20 11.1% 23 24 4.35%
Northwestern State University 17 19 11.8% 22 24 9.09%
University 18 20 11.1% 22 24 9.09%
Abilene Christian University 21 22 4.76% 26 27 3.85%
Houston Baptist University 19 20 5.26% 24 26 8.33%
Word 17 18 5.88% 23 23 0.00%
Sam Houston State University 19 19 0.00% 23 24 4.35%
University 19 19 0.00% 24 24 0.00%
Texas State University 21 21 0.00% 25 25 0.00%
University of Texas Arlington 19 20 5.26% 24 26 8.33%
Antonio 18 20 11.1% 22 25 13.6%
Mean Average for All Schools 18.5 19.53 5.56% 23.5 24.53 4.38%
97
Summary Statistics
The summary statistics in Table 7 below provide an overall picture of the
variables used in the study. The mean total athletic department expenditures during this
period were $9,463,292 with a low of $2,067,699 and a high of $33,674,947. Schools in
the Southland Conference during the period between 2003 and 2015 had, on average,
8,791 students per institution, but varied in enrollment size from the smallest, Houston
Baptist with 1,566 students, to the largest, Texas State with an undergraduate enrollment
of more than 27,000 students. The mean average for undergraduate applications to each
institution during this period was 6,248, but applications also varied significantly, with
Houston Baptist having many of the lowest overall application numbers and Texas State
having the greatest number. Standardized test scores varied from one institution to
another, the mean SAT Critical Reading 25th and 75th percentile scores were 448 and 559,
respectively, the mean SAT Math 25th and 75h percentile scores were 461 and 573,
respectively, and the mean ACT Composite 25th and 75th percentile scores were 19 and
24, respectively. Within institution variation for test scores, however, was very low.
Fixed effects regressions rely on high levels of variation in dependent and independent
variables within groups and the low level of variation for test scores made estimating the
impact of spending on test scores difficult.

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Table 7
Summary Statistics
Variable Name N M SD Min Max
Total Number of Undergraduates 208 8,790.62 5,644.42 1,566 27,369

ACT Composite 25th Percentile
203a 19.01 1.44 15 23
Scores
ACT Composite 75th Percentile
203a 23.94 1.62 20 28
Scores
Total Number of Male Freshmen
202b 2,552.83 1,657.15 257 8,132
Applicants
Total Number of Female Freshmen
202b 3,712.67 2,276.21 578 12,579
Applicants
Total Number of Freshmen
203c 6,247.60 3,885.68 835 20,711
Applicants
SAT Critical Reading 25th Percentile
170d 447.79 24.24 390 500
Scores
SAT Critical Reading 75th Percentile
170d 559.24 29.37 500 648
Scores
SAT Math 25th Percentile Scores 171e 460.92 27.03 400 510
SAT Math 75th Percentile Scores 171e 573.03 32.75 520 670
Total Athletic Department Spending 208 $9,463,292f $5,408,621 $2,067,699 $33,674,947
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Table 7
Summary Statistics
Total Cost of Attendance 208 $21,799.24f $7,631.22 $12,358.38 $44,740.00

Average Full Time Faculty Salary 208 $60,896.61f $8,130.49 $45,403.00 $84,483.00
Number of Freshmen By State 208 66,835.32 33,993.94 14,939 108,337
State Median Income 208 $49,315.25f $4,327.52 $40,066.00 $56,473.00
a
ACT scores were not reported for Texas A&M University in 2008 or 2009, for Lamar University in 2005, or Nicholls
State University in 2003 or 2004.
b
Male and female application data were not reported for Texas A&M University in 2008 or 2009, for Lamar University
in 2005, Nicholls State University in 2003 or 2004, or McNeese State University in 2007.
c
Total number of freshman applicant data were not reported for Texas A&M University in 2008 or 2009, for Lamar
University in 2005, or Nicholls State University in 2003 or 2004.
d
SAT Critical Reading scores were not reported for the University of Central Arkansas in 2003 or from 2007-2013, for
McNeese State University from 2003-2008, for Nicholls State University from 2003-2009, for Northwestern State
University in 2003, for Southeastern Louisiana University from 2003-2015, for Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi
from 2008-2009, or for Lamar University in 2005.
e
SAT Math scores were not reported for the University of Central Arkansas in 2003 or from 2008-2013, for McNeese
State University from 2003-2008, for Nicholls State University from 2003-2009, for Northwestern State University in
2003, for Southeastern Louisiana University from 2003-2015, for Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi from 2008-
2009, or for Lamar University in 2005.
f
Dollar denominated variables are calculated in 2015 dollars.
100
Results of Research Questions
Research Question 1 – Total Undergraduate Enrollment. What is the
relationship between athletics spending and total undergraduate enrollment at
Southland Conference member institutions during the period between 2003 and 2015?
The first research question is examined using a fixed effects regression of
institutional athletic spending in relation to the total undergraduate enrollments for
Southland Conference schools during the period between 2003 and 2015. Table 8 below
shows the results of the fixed effects regression on the relationship between total
undergraduate enrollment and institutional spending.
The fixed effects regression analysis indicated that during the period between
2003 and 2015, Southland Conference institutions did not demonstrate an increase in
enrollment following an increase in athletic spending, as demonstrated by the negative
coefficient and statistically insignificant finding for the current year and lagged year
effects of institutional athletic expenditures. The lagged institutional athletic
expenditures coefficient was negative and the current institutional athletic expenditures
coefficient was positive, but neither was significant at the 5% level or lower. The future
year effect, however, was positive, indicating that there was a relationship between
institutional enrollments and future spending on institutional athletic expenditures. The
coefficient of 0.0001459 indicates that future spending, or money spent the following
year, on intercollegiate athletics is tied to enrollment trends at Southland Conference
member institutions, while the lack of lagged findings indicates that the opposite
relationship is not observed. From this data it can be observed that increases in
101
institutional spending on athletics do not drive enrollment increases, but institutional
enrollments could drive future athletic spending. As enrollments increase, spending on
athletics in future years rises, so institutions with increasing enrollments can invest
greater amounts of revenue into intercollegiate athletics after their revenues rise, rather
than increase revenues as a result of institutional investment.
Another finding is a positive relationship (at the 1% level) between schools that
had moved to the highest levels of college sports, the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS),
and total undergraduate enrollments. Membership in a Football Bowl Subdivision
conference was correlated with a 1348.971 coefficient at a 0.001 level of statistical
significance.
102
Table 8
Fixed Effects Regression for Total Undergraduate Enrollment in the Southland

Conference (2003-2015)
Total Undergraduate Enrollment

Variable Name Coef. t P>|t|
Institutional Athletic Expenditures - L1 -0.0000866 -1.31 0.192
Institutional Athletic Expenditures 0.0000508 0.53 0.596
Institutional Athletic Expenditures - F1 0.0001459 2.08 0.040*
Number of Freshmen By State 0.076622 5.96 0.000**
Total Cost of Attendance -0.1213429 -3.74 0.000**
Average Full Time Faculty Salary -0.0281475 -1.07 0.288
State Median Income 0.0279583 0.99 0.322
FBS Level Football - Dummy 1348.971 3.40 0.001**
Division II Level Athletics - Dummy 227.7838 1.00 0.319
Prob > F 0.0000
N 172
* significant at the 5% level
** significant at the 1% level
Research Question 2 – Undergraduate Applications. What is the relationship
between athletics spending and undergraduate applications at Southland Conference
member institutions during the period between 2003 and 2015?
The second research question was examined using a fixed effects regression of the
relationship between institutional athletic spending and undergraduate applications for
Southland Conference schools during the period between 2003 and 2015. Tables 9, 10
103
and 11 show the results of the fixed effects regressions on the relationship between
undergraduate admissions and institutional spending on athletics.
Table 9 shows the results of a fixed effects regression that examined the
relationship between male undergraduate applications and institutional athletic
expenditures in the Southland Conference during the period between 2003 and 2015. The
results of the fixed effects regression analysis indicated that during the period between
2003 and 2015, Southland Conference institutions did not experience an increase in male
undergraduate applications following an increase in athletic spending. The lagged effects
of institutional athletic expenditures are negatively correlated to male undergraduate
applications while the current and future effects of spending are weakly positively
correlated but not statistically significant. These findings would suggest that there is no
relationship between institutional athletic expenditures and male undergraduate
applications at Southland Conference institutions during the period between 2003 and
2015.
Table 9 does, however, demonstrate a relationship at the 5% level between three
of the control variables included in the regression model, number of freshmen by state,
total cost of attendance, and FBS level football, and male undergraduate applications.
One of those findings, the relationship between male undergraduate applications and a
school’s inclusion in FBS level athletics, suggests that there is a positive relationship
between an institution’s Football Bowl Subdivision participation and application interest
from potential male undergraduate students, but not with their FCS level participation in
the Southland Conference.

104
Table 9
Fixed Effects Regression for Male Undergraduate Applications in the Southland

Male Undergraduate Applications

Institutional Athletic Expenditures - F1 0.0000403 1.00 0.318
Total Cost of Attendance 0.1292405 3.63 0.000**
Average Full Time Faculty Salary -0.0317527 -1.90 0.059
FBS Level Football - Dummy 995.7375 3.00 0.003*
Prob > F 0.0000
N 167
The results of a fixed effects regression in Table 10 show the relationship between
female undergraduate applications and institutional athletic expenditures in the Southland
Conference during the period between 2003 and 2015. The results of the regression
analysis indicate that no relationship exists between institutional athletic expenditures and
female undergraduate applications. The lagged, current, and future effects of institutional
athletic spending are weakly correlated with female undergraduate applications and all
three have p-values close to 1 and are not related even at the highest levels of traditional
testing.
105
Table 10 does indicate that female undergraduate applications are correlated with
four control variables included in the fixed effects regression model, including number of
freshmen by state, total cost of attendance, average faculty salary, and FBS level football.
Similarly to male undergraduate applications, but less statistically significant, is the
correlation seen in Table 10 between female undergraduate applications and an
institution’s inclusion in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) which, like male
undergraduate applications, signals that institutions competing at the FBS level typically
see an increase in female undergraduate applications while those competing in the FCS
level Southland Conference do not see that relationship.
Table 10
Fixed Effects Regression for Female Undergraduate Applications in the Southland

Female Undergraduate Applications

Institutional Athletic Expenditures - F1 -3.60E-06 -0.04 0.965
Average Full Time Faculty Salary -0.0605411 -2.23 0.027*
FBS Level Football - Dummy 972.9845 1.79 0.076
Prob > F 0.0000
N 167
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The relationship between total undergraduate applications and institutional
expenditures in Southland Conference schools between 2003 and 2015 is shown in Table
11. The results of the fixed effects regression demonstrate that there is no relationship
between institutional athletic expenditures and total undergraduate applications at
Southland Conference schools during the period under study. Although the coefficient
on the lagged effects of institutional athletic spending is negative, it is not statistically
significant. The present and future effects of institutional spending show a weak positive
correlation but are also not statistically significant.
Four of the control variables included in the regression model are related to total
undergraduate applications at the 5% level; number of freshmen by state, total cost of
attendance, average full time faculty salary, and FBS level football participation. Table
11 shows that total undergraduate applications are correlated positively with an
institution’s inclusion in the Football Bowl Subdivision of NCAA Division I athletics
competition, and this finding is significant at the 5% level.

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Table 11
Fixed Effects Regression for Total Undergraduate Applications in the Southland

Total Undergraduate Applications

Institutional Athletic Expenditures - F1 0.0000368 0.31 0.758
Average Full Time Faculty Salary -0.0919845 -2.16 0.032*
FBS Level Football - Dummy 1965.299 2.28 0.024*
Prob > F 0.0000
N 168
When examining the findings of the three fixed effects regression analyses in
Tables 9, 10 and 11, the results indicate that there is no relationship between institutional
athletic expenditures and number of undergraduate applications, either by gender or in
total. All three models demonstrated a negative correlation with the lagged effects of
spending, but none at a statistically significant level, while present and future effects of
spending were mixed and also not statistically significant. Each of the models
demonstrated, however, that a relationship existed between a school’s level of Division I

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participation, as institutions that competed at any point at the FBS level were positively
correlated with undergraduate enrollment increases at the 5% level of statistical
significance.
Research Question 3 – Applicant Quality. What is the relationship between
athletics spending and applicant quality at Southland Conference member institutions
during the period between 2003 and 2015?
The third research question was examined using a fixed effects regression of the
relationship between institutional athletic spending and student quality, as judged by
standardized test scores, for Southland Conference schools during the period between
2003 and 2015. Tables 12 through 17 show the results of the fixed effects regressions on
the relationship between student quality, as measured by standardized test scores, and
institutional spending on athletics. Four of the tables, tables 12 through 15, show the
relationship between SAT scores and institutional athletic spending and two tables, 16
and 17, show the relationship between ACT scores and institutional athletic spending.
Table 12 shows the results of a fixed effects regression analysis testing the
relationship between SAT Critical Reading 25th Percentile Scores and institutional
athletic expenditures in the Southland Conference during the period between 2003 and
2015. The findings of this regression, as shown in the table, indicate that there is no
relationship between the two variables in the current, lagged, or future effects. The
regression analysis does show that there is a negative relationship between an
institution’s participation at the FBS level of football, as there was an observed drop in
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SAT Critical Reading scores at the 25th percentile for schools participating in FBS
football.
Table 12
Fixed Effects Regression for SAT Critical Reading 25th Percentile Scores in the
Southland Conference (2003-2015)
SAT Critical Reading 25th Percentile Scores

Institutional Athletic Expenditures - L1 1.15E-06 1.26 0.210
Institutional Athletic Expenditures -5.93E-08 -0.07 0.946
Number of Freshmen By State -0.0000491 -0.18 0.858
Total Cost of Attendance -0.001032 -1.70 0.092
Average Full Time Faculty Salary 0.0003061 1.21 0.228
State Median Income -0.0008126 -1.29 0.198
FBS Level Football - Dummy -23.03597 -2.52 0.013*
Prob > F 0.0300
N 140
Table 13 shows the results of a fixed effects regression analysis of the relationship
between SAT Critical Reading 75th percentile scores and institutional athletic spending in
the Southland Conference between 2003 and 2015. The results of this regression indicate
that there is no relationship between institutional athletic spending and 75th percentile
SAT Critical Reading scores in Southland Conference schools during the period under
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study. This regression does show a weak positive correlation between the number of
freshmen in a state, and weak negative correlations between total cost of attendance and
state median income, and 75th percentile SAT Critical Reading Scores.
Table 13
Fixed Effects Regression for SAT Critical Reading 75th Percentile Scores in the
Southland Conference (2003-2015)
SAT Critical Reading 75th Percentile Scores

Institutional Athletic Expenditures - L1 -3.14E-07 -0.35 0.728
Institutional Athletic Expenditures - F1 8.17E-07 1.23 0.222
Total Cost of Attendance -0.0018715 -3.34 0.001**
State Median Income -0.0028579 -2.81 0.006**
FBS Level Football - Dummy -4.157767 -0.67 0.503
Prob > F 0.0000
N 140
between SAT Math 25th percentile scores in the Southland Conference during the period
between 2003 and 2015. The regression results show no relationships between
institutional athletic expenditures and SAT Math 25th percentile scores. Furthermore, no
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relationships between any of the independent predictor variables in the regression model
at a 5% level. At a 10% level there is a negative relationship between membership at an
FBS level institution and SAT Math scores at the 25th percentile.
Table 14
Fixed Effects Regression for SAT Math 25th Percentile Scores in the Southland
SAT Math 25th Percentile Scores

Institutional Athletic Expenditures - L1 4.90E-07 0.46 0.645
Institutional Athletic Expenditures 6.28E-08 0.05 0.964
Number of Freshmen By State -0.0001487 -0.37 0.713
Prob > F 0.0001
N 141
Table 15 shows the results of a fixed effects regression analysis on the
relationship between SAT Math 75th percentile scores in the Southland Conference
during the period between 2003 and 2015. The regression results show no relationships
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between any of the independent predictor variables and the dependent variable of SAT
Math 75th percentile scores. Furthermore the F-statistic for the regression is 0.5751
indicating that the regression model itself was not appropriate for these variables and that
the findings are of no use to the researcher. This high F-statistic is likely caused by the
low level of within group variation in standardized test scores, specifically at the 75th
percentile level. Without a high level of variation in the dependent and independent
variables, the fixed effects regression analysis is not effective for examining the
relationship between athletic spending and test scores.
Table 15
Fixed Effects Regression for SAGT Math 75th Percentile Scores in the Southland
SAT Math 75th Percentile Scores

Number of Freshmen By State 0.0006571 1.09 0.276
State Median Income -0.0003956 -0.22 0.823
Prob > F 0.5751
N 141
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The results of a fixed effects regression analysis of the relationship between ACT
Composite 25th percentile scores and institutional athletic expenditures is shown in Table
16. Results of the regression indicate that there is no relationship between ACT 25th
percentile scores and institutional athletic spending at Southland Conference institutions
during the period between 2003 and 2015. Three independent control variables are,
however, correlated to ACT 25th percentile scores: number of freshmen by state, total
cost of attendance, and whether the school was Division II or Division I.
Table 16
Fixed Effects Regression for ACT Composite 25th Percentile Scores in the Southland
ACT Composite 25th Percentile Scores

Number of Freshmen By State -0.0000536 -3.32 0.001**
Total Cost of Attendance 0.0000963 2.07 0.040*
Division II Level Athletics - Dummy 0.6245466 2.38 0.019*
Prob > F 0.0000
N 168
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between ACT Composite 75th percentile scores and institutional athletic spending in
Southland Conference schools during the period between 2003 and 2015. Results of this
regression indicate that there were no correlations between any of the independent
predictor variables in the model and ACT Composite 75th percentile scores at the 5%
level. Two of the independent variables, total cost of attendance and Division II
membership, were correlated with ACT Composite 75th percentile scores at the 10% level
of significance.
Table 17
Fixed Effects Regression for ACT Composite 75th Percentile Scores in the Southland
ACT Composite 75th Percentile Scores

Institutional Athletic Expenditures - L1 4.04e-08 0.79 0.428
Institutional Athletic Expenditures -7.04e-08 -1.24 0.218
Institutional Athletic Expenditures - F1 5.89e-08 1.34 0.183
Number of Freshmen By State -.0000233 -1.71 0.089
Total Cost of Attendance .0000424 0.97 0.332
Average Full Time Faculty Salary 8.61e-06 0.46 0.646
State Median Income -.000024 -0.59 0.559
FBS Level Football - Dummy .4216973 1.43 0.155
Division II Level Athletics - Dummy .4964216 1.91 0.059
Prob > F 0.0000
N 168
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In summary, there was no statistical significance found in any of the relationships
between institutional athletic expenditures and incoming student test scores in any of the
results from all six fixed effects regressions for either SAT or ACT scores. Low end
SAT scores for Critical Reading, the 25th percentile scores, were statistically correlated to
an institution’s membership at the FBS level of NCAA Division I athletics, while all
ACT scores had a statistically significant relationship to a school’s Division II or
Division I level of participation at least at the 10% level. Overall, the findings from this
research question appear to be that there is no relationship between institutional athletic
expenditures and incoming freshmen student quality, as assessed by standardized test
scores.
Summary
In this chapter, the researcher collected and analyzed panel data to answer each of
the three research questions presented in this study. In order to answer the research
questions, the researcher compared the independent variable of institutional athletic
expenditures to ten separate left side dependent variables and ran fixed effects regression
analyses on the data to determine the relationships between the variables. The first set of
fixed effects regressions explored the relationship between athletic expenditures and
institutional enrollment and determined that a future effect existed between enrollment
growth and future institutional spending on athletics. The second set of fixed effects
regressions explored the relationship between institutional athletic expenditures and
freshmen applications and determined that there was no statistically significant
relationship between institutional athletic expenditures and the number of undergraduate

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applications, either broken down by gender or in total. Finally, the third set of regression
analyses explored the relationship between institutional athletic expenditures and student
quality, as measured by standardized test scores. The results of the third set of regression
analyses indicated that no statistically significant relationships existed between athletic
spending and student quality as measured by either SAT or ACT test scores.
CHAPTER V
Summary, Conclusions, Implications, and Recommendations
Introduction
The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between intercollegiate
athletics and college enrollment measures at schools situated in a mid-major NCAA
Division I FCS athletic conference. Specifically, the researcher sought to examine
whether institutional athletics expenditures had an impact on the number of applications,
enrollments or quality of applicants at each of the universities within the Southland
Conference during the period between 2003 and 2015. Three research questions guided
this research:
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and 2015?
This chapter presents a summary review of the previous four chapters and
discusses the findings from Chapter IV in relationship to the context of the study and the
existing literature in the field. Each of the findings from Chapter IV will be examined
closely and implications of these findings will be discussed. Following a discussion of
the implications of the findings, the limitations of this study will be outlined, and
recommendations for future research will be presented. Finally, conclusions will be
presented summarizing the entire research study and this field of research.
The results of the statistical tests of the three research questions demonstrated just
one correlation between athletic spending and institutional undergraduate enrollment,
applications, and student quality measures as determined by standardized test scores.
With the exception of a future effect of institutional enrollment on athletic spending, all
of the other results showed no statistical relationship between the independent and
dependent variables under study. As athletic budgets increase for FCS level athletic
departments, it is important that we gather an understanding of the benefits that athletics
bring to the university, specifically when the notion that athletics act as a front porch is so
pervasive. While the existing research provides a mixed evidence that intercollegiate
athletics drives institutional enrollment, application and student quality outcomes, this
research suggests that there is little evidence to support the idea that increasing
investments in college sports yields better institutional outcomes. A more detailed

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examination of the results of Chapter IV will be explored in greater detail in the next
section of this chapter.
Summary of the Study
The directional relationship that institutional enrollment has a future effect on
athletic spending is an interesting finding in this study, specifically because it challenges
the broadly held notion that high profile athletics programs generate interest in
universities and therefore act as the front porch for an institution to drive total enrollment,
undergraduate applications and student quality. Traditional explanations for investing in
athletics hold the position that success in athletics drives enrollment, and therefore
increased investments in athletics should yield higher enrollments for the university. The
finding in the regression analysis for the first research question demonstrates that there is
an effect of institutional enrollment on future athletic department expenditures, which
suggests that institutional enrollment drives athletic spending rather than the other way
around. While the causation in this relationship is not proven through the fixed effects
analysis, the suggestion of causality is stronger for the future effects of enrollment on
athletic spending than institutional spending on enrollment.
The future effect of enrollment on athletic spending clearly frames the research
finding in support of Fort’s (2013, 2016) agency theory. Fort (2013) argued that
university administrators invest their finite financial resources into various aspects of
college campuses because of their perceived value to the university and based on their
perceived return on investment. Furthermore, Fort (2013, 2016) rejects the arms race
argument that university administrators are naïve participants who are incapable of
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scaling back athletic department finances to fit the needs of the university budget.
Agency theory as discussed by Fort suggests that university administrators invest in
college athletics because of their belief that the benefits of that investment meet the
overall goals of the university at a level justifiable to support the investment itself (Fort,
2013).
Since athletics is just one of the investments made by university leaders across the
university, and leadership allocates funds according to their perceived belief in the value
of those investments, athletic department spending is not a drain on the institution but
instead a calculated investment that yields a desired outcome for university leaders (Fort,
2013). The findings of the first research question in this study suggest that athletic
budgets are a reflection of the university’s financial position as judged by enrollment and
are therefore more likely to be set by active agents working in senior leadership positions
rather than driven by opportunistic Athletic Directors at the expense of naïve leadership.
It would confirm one of the central tenets of agency theory that university administrators
understand the financial relationship between athletics and their institutions and act
according to what is best for the institution’s overall goals (Fort, 2013).
The findings of the second research question in this study conflict with the
assertion that an increase in athletic spending results in an increase in total freshmen
applications to the institution, as the fixed effects regressions for male, female and total
undergraduate applications were all unrelated to athletic spending. While overall
undergraduate application totals increased at most of the schools in the Southland
Conference during the period between 2003 and 2015, some by as much as 1,520%, the
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results of the fixed effects regression analysis showed no relationship between the
spending variable and applications. Castle and Kostelnik’s (2011) exploration of
Division II athletics found a similar result to this study in that there was no relationship
between an athletic department’s investments or athletic success and an increase in
overall freshmen applications. The findings of the second research question, however,
challenge the conclusions of Murphy and Trandel (1994), Toma and Cross (1998), Goff
(2000), Pope and Pope (2009, 2014), Roufagalas and Byrd (2014) and Anderson (2016),
who all found a correlation between a school’s athletic success and an increase in total
undergraduate admissions, specifically the success of FBS football and men’s basketball.
Anderson (2016), however, noted that the gap between athletic spending and athletic
success, and therefore the indirect relationship between spending and admissions, is
difficult to determine because researchers do not know for certain what the specific
relationship between investing in athletics and wins is.
Generally speaking, this research must be contextualized in relation to the
findings of athletic spending’s relationship to athletic success. The research of Litan,
Orszag and Orszag (2003), Orszag and Israel (2009) and Lawrence, Li, Regas, and
Kander (2012) found that financial investments in athletics, specifically investments in
football, were either unrelated or only very weakly correlated with overall athletic
success, and that the most substantial relationships existed between investments in
women’s sports and non-gender specific areas, but only when related to NACDA
Director’s Cup Standings. University leaders of FCS level Division I schools should look
more closely at the findings of Jones (2013) that suggest no relationship between
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spending on athletics and on-field athletic success at the Football Championship
Subdivision level. Specifically, Jones noted that spending increases at the FCS level
typically fund “areas not directly related to competitive success” and therefore should not
be assumed to have the kinds of indirect powers that spending increases at FBS level
schools (Jones, 2013, p 602). The logical extension of these findings is that if
institutional investments are found to be unrelated to athletic success, and institutional
enrollment measures in previous literature are all linked to athletic success, then the
reasoning that additional financial investments in athletics will yield institutional
outcomes is even more specious.
The findings of the third research question in this study challenge the claim that
college athletic success and investments in athletics are related to attracting students with
higher standardized test scores, as the results of the third research question found no
relationship between institutional investments in athletics and test scores for either the
SAT Critical Reading, SAT Math, or ACT Composite scores of incoming freshmen at
Southland Conference schools during the period between 2003 and 2015. The results of
Table 4 demonstrate that the increases in SAT Critical Reading scores for some
Southland Conference schools from 2003 to 2015 were generally small, and overall the
mean averages for the conference decreased at both the 25th and 75th percentiles.
Similar findings can be seen for SAT Math scores in Table 5, where scores at some
institutions increased in small amounts while decreasing in others, and as a conference
the mean average for all schools declined at the 75th percentile level. The mean average
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ACT Composite scores increased by roughly 1 point at both the 25th and 75 percentile
ranges but neither finding was related to an increase in athletic spending.
These findings confirm the research of Litan, Orszag and Orszag (2003), whose
fixed effects analysis of data for all Division I FBS schools during the period between
1993 and 2001 showed that there was no relationship between athletic spending and
incoming freshmen SAT scores. Additionally, the finding that there was no relationship
between athletic spending and SAT scores at the 75th percentile level confirms the
research of Smith (2008 & 2009), who found that regular and post-season success in
men’s basketball or football have no relationship to SAT scores at the 75th percentile
level. Furthermore, the findings of this research support Frank’s (2004) empirical
conclusions that whatever positive relationship might exist at the smallest levels between
institutional athletic spending and test score outcomes is not worth the financial
investment to sports to achieve such small gains in test scores.
Conversely, the findings of this study’s third research question specifically
challenge the findings of Mixon, Trevino and Minto (2004), Tucker (2005) and Tucker
and Amato (2006). Using data from the 2000-2001 football season, Mixon, Trevino, and
Minto (2004) found that there was a relationship between athletic success and median
SAT scores, and that highly selective institutions were able to improve the quality of
incoming freshmen classes as athletics improved. Tucker (2005) and Tucker and Amato
(2006) also found relationships between winning and median SAT scores, but noted that
to better understand the relationship between incoming student quality and athletics the
SAT score would have to be segmented into 25th and 75th percentiles. In general,
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however, the findings of the SAT and ACT research data do not suggest any relationship
between athletic spending and improved student applicant quality.
Overall, the findings of the three research questions reject the idea that
institutional investments in college athletics positively impact future undergraduate
enrollments, freshmen applications, or the quality of incoming students at Division I FCS
schools. Instead, these findings indicate that quantitative institutional outcomes such as
enrollment and application metrics cannot be attributed to financial investments in
athletics, and that institutions should not support additional athletic spending with the
belief that they will achieve greater institutional enrollment goals as a result.
Implications
The finding that athletic spending has virtually no relationship to institutional
enrollment and application outcomes should challenge university leaders to consider the
role that intercollegiate athletics plays within their universities. By rejecting the notion
that universities need to support expensive athletic departments in order to maintain large
enrollments or achieve enrollment growth, university leaders could instead begin to
question the true value that intercollegiate athletics provide to the student body and wider
academic community.
These findings open the door for university leaders to begin exploring
opportunities for de-escalation of institutional commitment to athletic spending, or
perhaps the complete removal of Division I sports from their campuses. The findings of
Hutchinson and Bouchet (2010, 2011, 2014) and Hutchinson, Rascher, and Jennings
(2016) all support the idea that with the correct information it is possible for institutional
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leaders to change the course of spending in the face of increasingly shrinking funding
from state and federal governments for higher education. Specifically, if institutional
stakeholders see the potentially negative implications of overspending on athletics they
can instead work to achieve organizational exit strategies (Bouchet & Hutchinson, 2010).
The trap that many universities leaders find themselves in, when committed to plans for
increased investment in athletics to support broader institutional goals, can be broken if
they understand that the relationships between that spending do not lead to the desired
outcomes. Furthermore, faculty and other university stakeholders are better able to frame
their side of the funding debate if their understanding of the true relationship between
athletic spending and institutional outcomes is more robust and clear.
The possibility of discontinuing Division I athletics, specifically the most
expensive sport of football, could also be considered if the costs for supporting athletics
grow to be too much for an institution to support. The research of Jones (2014b), Goff
(2000) and Hutchinson, Rascher, and Jennings (2016) all found mixed results for schools
discontinuing football or intercollegiate athletics, but overall could not conclude that
dropping football resulted in significant enrollment declines or increases. The findings of
the literature should inform university leaders to consider the possibility that
intercollegiate athletics, at least at the Division I level, could be too cost prohibitive to
continue, and instead should look at alternative paths to continue participating in
competitive college athletics. The extreme possibility of completely eliminating
intercollegiate sports should also be considered for institutions with budgets that are
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stretched too thin to adequately achieve the broad set of institutional goals that they must
meet for their students, faculty, staff, and institutional stakeholders.
Recommendations for Future Research
The purpose of this fixed effects regression study was to explore the relationship
between athletic spending and institutional outcomes at Division I FCS institutions, with
a specific focus on undergraduate enrollments, freshmen applications, and freshmen SAT
and ACT scores. The results of this research should provide insight for researchers
interested in studying the impact of athletic spending on university goals and success
measures. To make future research into this topic more relevant to a wider audience, a
number of factors could be taken into consideration. Future researchers could apply this
economic model to another Division I FCS conference or to a broader set of institutions,
perhaps to all of Division I FCS, Division II, or Division III. The broader the set of
institutions, and the longer and the more robust the data set, the more the findings will
accurately reflect trends in college athletic spending.
Future research on athletic spending and institutional outcomes should take
advantage of robust time series panel datasets and fixed effects statistical approaches to
analyze the data and examine the relationships between the variables being studied. As
was seen in the literature review, longitudinal panel data sets provide researchers with the
most comprehensive sources for interpreting large amounts of data for many institutions
over a long period of time. One of the challenges for future researchers is to avoid
looking specifically at short term or localized effects of athletics success to make

127
sweeping generalizations about the impact of athletic performance or spending on
institutional outcomes.
Unlike many studies that explored the relationship between athletic success and
institutional outcomes, this study’s exploration focused on institutional athletic
expenditures because that variable is frequently discussed in relationship to the growing
problem of bloated college fees and the student debt crisis. Institutional spending as a
variable, however, is challenging in studies like this because of the linear cost increases
of higher education in general and competing in Division I athletics in particular. The
variable is further complicated by the fact that not all institutions have the same
institutional costs associated with athletic spending, and therefore each institution is
unique in how they fund athletics and what budget items are included in those costs.
Standardized test scores, specifically ACT Composite scores, are a challenging
variable to test against institutional athletic expenditures, especially over a period of time
where a high level of linear variance is observed in the athletic spending variable but very
little variance occurs in scores within each institution over time at the 25th and 75th
percentile levels. Future studies could employ the technique of Pope and Pope (2014) for
collecting more specific test score and institution-specific application data from the
College Board and its application data set rather than more general percentile data.
Proving causality is also a challenge in research of this type. Many university
administrators, using the front porch effect of college athletics as their guide, argue that
athletics success causes institutional enrollment growth, application increases, and
improvements in student quality. This research suggests that not only is that relationship
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virtually unseen in the Southland Conference, but that the opposite might be true and
institutional growth actually causes athletic spending increases.
The causal direction of spending and enrollment implies a need for additional
research on the relationship between athletic expenses and university tuition costs. An
alternative hypothesis for the relationship between university spending on athletics and
institutional enrollment measures that could be explored is that athletics costs,
specifically athletic scholarship costs, are increasing as a result of increased cost of
attendance at colleges and universities, and that intercollegiate athletic expenses are
closely tied to cost of attendance in general. This alternative hypothesis would argue that
as general tuition and fees increase so do the costs imposed on athletics departments, and
therefore athletics expenditures need to be seen as a function of general rises in college
costs overall.
Qualitative indirect outcomes of college athletics such as the psychic value of
athletics, the ability of athletics to improve student self-esteem and the aspects of
athletics that bring together the campus community through group activities, were not
included in this study. This is where college athletics plays an important role in the
university setting that cannot be recreated in the classroom, “. . . by bonding students to
the institution for life and energizing them to wear the colors on game day . . .” (Labaree,
2017, p. 184). Different from the quantitative enrollment and admissions outcomes
studied in this research, the emotional and psychological benefits provided by
intercollegiate athletics are challenging in and of themselves to study, and therefore are
129
deserving of their own research in relation to increased financial investments in college
sports.
University prestige through intercollegiate athletics, especially the relationship
between universities and their peer institutions, is another area that deserves further
attention from researchers, especially with relation to rising costs of college athletics
(Fisher, 2007; Fisher, 2009; Lovaglia & Lucas, 2005). The relationship between
increased athletics spending and institutional prestige could help confirm or challenge the
notion that college football plays a central role to membership in a peer set of institutions,
and therefore helps form an institution’s identity as a ‘real university’ (Estler & Nelson,
2005). Furthermore, the more abstract notions of how the public perceives an institution
through athletics must be investigated, especially the linkage of the public to a magnetic
attraction, especially college football (Estler & Nelson, 2005; Toma, 2003). More
investigation needs to be undertaken to understand if investing in college athletics really
serves a perceptional advantage for an institution, especially in the face of arguments that
“. . . athletics, especially football and basketball, reinforce the populist appeal of what
might otherwise be a remote and socially exclusive institution . . .” (Labaree, 2017, p.
131).
Concluding Remarks
This research study attempted to find a new way of discussing the relationship
between athletic spending and institutional admissions and enrollment measures at FCS
institutions in order to fill a gap in the literature that was being overlooked by other
studies in this subject. Using a widely accepted statistical model and a research design
130
employed by earlier researchers, this study focused on a subset of FCS schools in the
Southland Conference to highlight the unique issues at a level of Division I athletics that
was being overlooked by studies that focused primarily on FBS level football and men’s
basketball programs in particular and “big time” college athletics in general. This study
also attempted to create an economic model that could explain the relationship between
athletic spending and institutional outcomes, which should be useful for application with
other FCS conference case studies or to explore these same variables in more empirical
ways for all of Division I athletics.
While not necessarily relying on new or unique data sources, what makes this
research unique is the narrow focus of the Southland Conference as the concentration of
the study, and the unique perspective that can be gleaned from examining a small group
of similarly sized, geographically similar universities competing at the same level of
Division I athletics. This kind of narrow focus reveals patterns that can be best exploited
by institutional leaders at the schools under study, but can also inform leadership of
similarly sized or geographically proximate schools. Schools within the Southland
Conference in particular, and Division I FCS schools in general, can all glean useful
information from this study about the role that athletics plays on their campuses, which is
very important as the fiscal realities of higher education become more pronounced.
As government funding for higher education declines and student loan debt
increases, the debate surrounding the costs of college will continue to fuel conversations
at all levels of higher education. The model for funding of higher education and, to a
lesser extent intercollegiate athletics is, according to Labaree (2017), now broken.
131
The cost of pursuing a college education is increasingly being borne by the
students themselves, as states are paying a declining share of the costs of higher
education. Tuition is rising, and as a result student loans are rising. Public
research universities are in a particularly difficult position because their state
funding is falling most rapidly. According to one estimate, at the current rate of
decline, the average state fiscal support for public higher education will reach
zero in 2059. (Labaree, 2017, p. 156)
For institutions that support Division I athletics departments, specifically those operating
outside of the Power 5 conferences, the impact of decreased state funding will inevitably
be felt much worse than for those with programs that have the capacity to generate larger
sums of revenue.
Given how many different conclusions researchers in this field have come to
regarding the indirect benefits of college athletics, it should come as no surprise that this
field will likely be plagued with debate. Regardless of the empirical proof of its real and
perceived value for colleges, intercollegiate athletics will continue to play a highly visible
role in higher education, and arguments about its value to the university will continue to
flame discussions among scholars and university leaders well into the future.
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VITA
Robert D. McDermand graduated from Thomas L. Kennedy Secondary School in
2000. He attended the University of Waterloo, in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, and
received his Bachelor of Arts in History Degree in 2004. He continued his historical
studies at the University of Waterloo and completed his Master of Arts in History Degree
in 2006. He began his professional career in college sports and continued his graduate
studies at The Ohio State University in 2007 and completed his Master of Public
Administration Degree in 2009. In 2011 he began working in the athletic department at
Stephen F. Austin State University where he completed a Master of Business
Administration Degree in 2015. He was accepted into the 2015 Doctoral Cohort at
Stephen F. Austin State University, where he earned a Doctorate of Education in
Educational Leadership in 2018. Currently, he serves as the Associate Athletic Director
for Academic and Student Services at Stephen F. Austin State University.
Permanent Address: 2735 Summer Hill Circle, Nacogdoches, Texas 75965
Style manual designation: Publication Manual of the American Psychological
Association, Sixth Edition
Typist: Robert D. McDermand
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Stephen F.

Austin State University

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A QUANTITATIVE STUDY OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN

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This dissertation is available at SFA ScholarWorks: https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/etds/147

SPENDING AND INSTITUTIONAL ENROLLMENT MEASURES IN FCS

Robert D. McDermand, B.A., M.A., M.P.A., M.B.A.

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of

Stephen F. Austin State University

For the Degree of

STEPHEN F. AUSTIN STATE UNIVERSITY

SPENDING AND INSTITUTIONAL ENROLLMENT MEASURES IN FCS

Robert D. McDermand, B.A., M.A., M.P.A., M.B.A.

As university budgets face fiscal challenges, it is important that university leaders

could be spent in other areas of the university.

Specifically, the researcher sought to examine whether institutional athletics expenditures

had an impact on the total enrollments, number of applications, or quality of applicants at

each of the universities within the Southland Conference.

The results of this study showed virtually no relationships between athletic

statistically significantly impact university enrollment, application or student quality

most valuable of my life.

research richer than it otherwise could have ever been.

“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of

giants.” – Isaac Newton.

I would like to dedicate this dissertation to my children, Robert and Reid, to

whom I have sage advice.

a “degree” or “diploma.” Feed your mind, boys.

reading. Just come and ask.

ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................... vi

LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................. ix

I. INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY ......................................................................1

Background of the Problem ...............................................................................3

Theoretical Foundation ......................................................................................6

Statement of the Problem .................................................................................14

Purpose Statement ............................................................................................15

Research Questions ..........................................................................................15

Significance of the Research ............................................................................16

Organization of the Study ................................................................................22

Athletics in Higher Education ..........................................................................27

FCS Athletics ...................................................................................................29

Psychological Benefits of Intercollegiate Athletics .........................................31

Institutional Spending and Athletic Success ....................................................32

Athletic Success and Student Test Scores .......................................................35

Athletic Success and Admissions Applications ...............................................42

Athletic Success and Financial Giving ............................................................50

Athletic Success and Other Institutional Outcomes.........................................57

De-Escalation of Commitment in Intercollegiate Athletics .............................60

Dropping Intercollegiate Football and Institutional Enrollment ......................65

Fixed Effects Modeling....................................................................................67

III. METHODOLOGY ..................................................................................................73

Research Questions ..........................................................................................74

Data Collection ................................................................................................78

IV. FINDINGS ..............................................................................................................84

Descriptive Statistics ........................................................................................85

Results of Research Questions .........................................................................99

Research Question 1 – Total Undergraduate Enrollment ................................99

Research Question 2 – Undergraduate Applications .....................................101