How Football Shapes Colleges: The Effects of Adding a High-Profile Sport

• In Event: Equity, Morality, and Identity Implications for College Sport

Abstract

Football teams draw the largest crowds of any American collegiate sport, and with them, both positive and negative attention for colleges and universities. Fifty colleges have added the sport recently, but little research has examined the institutional effects of adding a team. We use difference-in-difference models to find that adding a football team appears to yield significant increases in applications at many types of institutions, but has mixed impacts on enrollment and tuition revenue.

Authors

• David Welch Suggs, University of Georgia

• Jennifer May-Trifiletti, University of Georgia - Athens

• James C. Hearn, University of Georgia - Athens