Football teams draw the largest crowds of any American collegiate sport, and with them, both positive and negative attention for colleges and universities. Nearly 50 colleges have added the sport recently, but little research has examined the institutional effects of adding a team. Some of these institutions are regional research universities…

Colleges compete to attract students by investing in amenities such as athletics, dormitories, and student activities. We examine the effect of student consumption of postsecondary amenities on academic achievement and future donation behavior in the context of Big-Time college sports. We resolve the selection issue using data from a large, public…

Earning a college degree in the United States, especially from a college or university deemed elite or prestigious, is seen as the path to a more financially secure and prosperous life for the student and their family. Competition for financial aid or admission to top-ranked colleges and universities is fierce. For this reason, families of all…

The recruiting component is a critical piece to the success of collegiate athletic programs. Small colleges that rely on athletic programs as a branch of enrollment management find coaches and athletic directors continuously searching for the most talented student-athletes to increase the chances of winning games. Along with talent, coaches must…

The popular image of college football is that of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I programs whose nationally known student athletes participate in televised bowl games before being drafted by the National Football League (sometimes entering the draft before finishing college). The salaries of Division I team coaches can…

This article explores the external environmental factors that affected organizational change at Joseph's University and Villanova University two private Catholic institutions in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-resulting in differentiated market positions at each institution. Specifically, the role of demographic changes and the role of intercollegiate…

College athletics is currently in the midst of a building boom in which universities are competing with each other to reach an always-increasing standard of lavish athletic facilities. While these facilities are costing in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, little research is examining the return on investment for athletic programs. The…

This study uses Bourdieusian (1977, 1978, 2011) approaches to reproduction to position athletic bureaucracies as legitimating institutions that convert capital. I examine how the cultural production of amateurism in U.S. college sports facilitates class reproduction by enabling a direct conversion between accrued economic, social, and physical…

University and college institutional advertisements, which typically are broadcast as public service announcements during the halftime of football games, were the subject of a quantitative analysis focused on commonality in messaging and employment of the semiotic theory of brand advertising. Findings indicate advertisements focus on students'…

Coaches often enter their profession in hopes of helping others and making the world a better place in which to live. In this narrative, the Author recounts a volleyball recruiting trip to Denver, Colorado. He stays in an area of the city plagued by homelessness and crime. What he saw and experienced made him question the real impact he has on…

The authors of this article describe an adaptation of the rent-seeking game by Goeree and Holt (1999) to the recruiting of athletes by NCAA Division I football and basketball teams. Students engage in an effort-based lottery, i.e., recruiting to sign a blue-chip prospect. The winner gets the prize--the player's marginal revenue product in excess…

On the campus of Brigham Young University (BYU) sits a 66,000-seat stadium that bears the name of a college football hall of fame coach LaVell Edwards (1930-2016). While pursuing his doctorate, Edwards (1978) decided to focus his dissertation on college recruiting and significantly contributed to the forefront of student-athlete college choice…

The purpose of this qualitative research study was to analyze and develop an in-depth understanding of the integration and experience of international student-athletes at National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I institutions in the United States. International student-athletes who participated in this study were not born in the U.S.,…

This paper will apply the work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in Prospect theory to the college recruiting process. Prospect theory challenges one of the fundamental ideas of Economics; humans are rational creatures and make rational decisions. The theory demonstrates that in fact, often humans do not make rational decisions and are instead…

This study examined the motivations of female student-athletes to participate in intercollegiate athletics at two-year institutions. Utilizing a qualitative grounded theory approach, this study investigated four focus groups, constructed of female student-athletes from three different two-year institutions located in the Upper Midwest region of…