College sports are a centerpiece of American society, and watching your team win a national championship can be fun and exciting. Universities pour massive amounts of money into their athletic departments in order to make it to these games and have successful seasons. With sports being such an important part of many people’s lives, this begs the question, is the fun and excitement the only result of winning such a game, or is there more that happens that affects the institutions that participate in a national championship or the March Madness basketball tournament that can justify this large spending? After thinking of the possible results of winning a national championship or doing extremely well in a season in either of the two most popular collegiate competitions, football and men’s basketball, some possible impacts come to mind. First, is it possible that the increased media coverage of a winning school could impact the number of applications a school receives? Secondly, as a result, does this make a school more selective when picking students to give acceptance letters to, therefore making the incoming freshman class academically more advanced than they otherwise would have been? I argue that as a result of winning a football or basketball national championship, or simply having a great season on the national stage, universities receive more applications, which in turn leads schools to be more selective and increases the academic quality of incoming freshman classes.

If you look at the admissions statistics for the University of Florida in the fall of 2006 as Kristi Dosh from the Business of College Sports did, Florida had roughly 21,000 high school seniors apply for admission to their school. In the 2006-07 athletic seasons, the Florida Gators won not only the football national championship but also the men’s basketball national championship, the first school to ever do so. The following year, in 2007, Florida received 3,000 more applications, totalling over 24,000, a 10% increase from the year prior (Dosh). Some people claim that colleges are growing regardless of how well their sports teams do, but if we use the common data set from Florida and look at the number of applications the school was sent in the fall of 2005, the year before they won the national championships, we find that they were sent 21,151 applications (University of Florida 7). This is roughly the exact same amount that they received the next year after only finishing 6th in the Southeastern Conference for football. In this case, after an average season for the University of Florida in football the amount of applications the school was sent stayed relatively the same and after winning the football and basketball national championships the number of applications jumped 10%.

In 2013 the small, new, and relatively unknown school of Florida Gulf Coast University made a run as a #15 seed to the sweet sixteen in the division one NCAA men’s basketball tournament. Unfortunately, this is where the story ended for the team that held open tryouts earlier that year to fill the team, but this run put the decade old institution on the map. According to the common data set supplied by Florida Gulf Coast, the fall of the year that FGCU made their march madness appearance they were sent 10,804 applications. The next year, the first time high school students could send applications after the basketball team made their tournament run the institution received 13,773 applications (FGCU 6). This is an increase of about 3,000 applications or over a 25% increase from 2013. This upward trend cannot be accredited to the new school growing for other reasons. The fall before the miraculous season FGCU received applications from 10,073 students. The growth from this year to the next was only around 7% and the year after the spike of applications actually saw a decrease of about 100 applications (FGCU 6). Although FGCU did not win a national championship, winning the games they did gave them the media exposure they needed in order to get the name of their school out to a larger audience.

Similarly, in the 2006 men’s basketball tournament, eleventh seed George Mason University made an appearance in the Final Four. GMU was unable to win their next match and as a result this is where their Cinderella story came to end. Nonetheless, this feat garnered a massive amount of free media coverage and because sports are such a major part of American society, they create a platform for free advertising for their school on a national scale. According to a study done by Robert Baker of George Mason University, the value of the television, print, and electronic media coverage was almost 700 million dollars (Baker). This free publicity is a major causes for the spike in admission inquiries that George Mason experienced. The coverage for doing well in a football or basketball season gives free national advertising to schools that otherwise do not advertise on such a large scale. This is especially impactful for less well known schools such as George Mason and Florida Gulf Coast as they have advertising budgets that are far less substantial than major universities with upwards of 40,000 students. For schools like this, growth that otherwise takes many years to accomplish can be achieved in just a single year. This effect that successful athletic programs have on their universities is known as the “flutie effect” (Silverthorne).

The “flutie effect”, named after Boston College’s 1984 quarterback Doug Flutie is the proposed effect that having successful sports teams has on a school admissions. An anniversary piece done by Fox Sports explains that after a successful season, Boston College went into their final regular season game ranked #10 and were put up against the defending national champions, the Miami Hurricanes. In the final seconds of the game Boston College trailed by 4 points. Flutie threw a 50 yard hail mary pass to win the game (Fox Sports). The match instantly went down as an all time classic and permanently put Boston College football on the map. In the years following the historic game, admission inquires surged by double digits (Silverthorne). It is thought that the school’s football team and this legendary game is to be accredited for the growth.

Clearly, when a college has successful sports teams the interest in their school from high school students increases, but does this correlate to higher selectivity and a higher academic quality of the incoming freshman class? I argue that as a result of the higher admission inquiries selectivity has to increase.

As before, University of Florida will be our example. Using Florida’s common data set, 21,000 high school students applied for enrollment in 2006. That year the school admitted 10,652 students, a 51% acceptance rate. The year after they won the both the football and basketball national championships 24,000 students applied and Florida admitted 10,258 of the applicants, an acceptance rate of 42%, or a drop of about 10% (University of Florida 7). There are clear reasons for this, primarily capacity. Under normal circumstances a school will only grow a couple percentage points a year. As a result, universities are not normally prepared to accommodate a high influx of students. When something happens that boosts the number of applications a school is sent, that school can still only house relatively the same amount of students as before. This, therefore, makes a school more selective and lowers the acceptance rate. In order to grow schools must build more housing and classrooms to accommodate for the increase in students. It is not every year when schools plan to do this.

In the case of Florida Gulf Coast, the year before the spike in applications their applied to admitted ratio was 10,804 to 7,108 or an acceptance rate of 66%. The year of the application spike the ratio was 13,773 to 8,110, an acceptance rate of 58% (FGCU 6). Here, the acceptance rates dropped 8%, but you may still point out that over one thousand more students were admitted than the year before. The reason for this is simple, Flordia Gulf Coast University is an extremely new institution and therefore trying to grow rapidly. According to Madison Hampton of Eagle News, in a story she covered titled “FGCU Slows Growth Rate”, around the time of the sweet sixteen run FGCU planned for about 5% growth rates (Hampton). So growth was expected anyway, but not the 25% increase that admission inquires experienced. Since the sweet sixteen run FGCU has slowed its growth rate further increasing the selectivity of the school.

In a report conducted by Robert Frank of the Knight Commission, an institution whose mission it is to insure that the NCAA and universities stand by their pledge to use athletics to boost athletes academic achievement, he explores the link between athletic success and the number of applications a school receives, as well as the student quality of the school. Throughout the report, Frank often claims that from his research that it is hard to come to a conclusion on whether athletic performance yields increased applications and higher quality students (Frank).  Although some of the studies used in Frank’s report agree with my claim, many do not, making the report as a whole inconclusive. The problem with a lot of the sources he uses is that they are out of date. Frank cites studies and uses data that dates back to the 70’s. The meaning of college sports in America has changed since this time period, and the the way people think about sports in everyday life has changed as well. In today’s society, sports are on the front of many people’s mind and have major implications in their decision making, especially in teenagers and young adults. Because of athletics prevalence in the media, this is what can push people toward the school that do well athletically.

Given that universities that do well athletically tend to receive more applications than those that do not, does this increase in applications translate to greater academic requirements for potential students and does this in turn generate a higher academic quality for the school in general? From 1999 to 2001 The Ohio State Buckeyes football team finished with an average seven wins and five losses, and not once finishing in the top 25. After these average years for the team they won the 2002 national championship. Since then, there has only been one year when the Buckeyes did not finish in the top 20 and only two years when they did not finish in the top 10 (All-Time Results 11-13). According to Ohio State, at the end of their drought of having a successful football program in 2001 the average ACT score for the school was a 24. After the succession of great seasons Ohio States average is up to a 29 (The Ohio State University 2). This five point jump is a 20% increase from before. Since then Ohio State has become one of the top institutions in the region, beginning to rival the likes of Michigan and Northwestern.

From the year 2000 to 2004 the University of Alabama Crimson Tide football team had what the school would now regard as a run of bad seasons, only finishing in the top 25 a single time. The Ledger-Enquirer explains that after this drought the school was pegged with sanctions for giving student athletes special benefits, which include free textbooks and other amenities. As a result, a majority of the wins from the 2005, 2006, and 2007 seasons were stripped from the team (Ledger-Enquirer). At the end of the this succession of bad and sanction pegged seasons the average ACT score for their freshman class was a 24. Since 2007, the Crimson Tide have finished in the top ten every year, winning four national championships. Today, the average ACT score for the freshman class is a 27 (University of Alabama 9). Since the school has started to consistently produce one of the top teams in the country the average ACT score has risen 13%. In this same time period admission inquires have more than doubled going from 14,000 in 2007 to 36,000 in 2015 (University of Alabama 6). This increase growth in popularity for the school has caused them to be more selective with the students they choose to admit. After all, it is in a college’s best interest to admit the best students possible while being able to keep enrollment growing.

Another reason these indirect benefits of doing well in athletics is so important is that college sports are expensive for schools to fund. In fact, a majority of university’s athletic departments take a loss. According to the NCAA only about twenty of the over one hundred division one schools generate a profit from their athletic departments (NCAA). Most schools have to subsidize their athletic programs in order to keep them running. This is an even larger problem for schools that do not have football teams as football is largest cash generator for most division one schools. For schools that rely on their basketball teams to generate the bulk of revenue, such as Florida Gulf Coast as mentioned earlier, doing well in the division one tournament is extremely important in order to see benefits from their athletics. In this case, the benefit that national exposure has on schools is profound. This is one of the major reasons that the athletic departments that operate in red have to continue operation. In addition, the NCAA also claims “The reason schools invest is because sports provide educational value to student-athletes while enhancing overall campus life and building lifelong connections with alumni and other supporters. Those are all important outcomes from athletic programs that are worth celebrating, sharing and investing in wisely” (NCAA). The benefits that NCAA previously stated coupled with the benefits that schools see to their academics and admissions justify this large spending on athletics and allow for schools to operate in the red all while seeing major returns on their money. 

The amount that colleges spend on their athletic departments is a hotly debated topic as there are many who find that this figure is too high. The benefits that come from spending money on athletics in order to insure a school’s teams are competitive are reason to continue the spending. Receiving an increased number of applications and increasing academic quality is something all universities are trying to achieve and a successful football or basketball team can help do this. Additionally, many schools rely on the intangible effects of having successful athletics in order to advertise and get students to look at their schools. In order to push the idea of the importance of college sports, think about how many major colleges you know of that simply do not have an athletic department that participates in the NCAA. This number is probably very small and possibly even zero. Whether you are a sports fan or not, you cannot deny the importance they play in our society and their importance to universities around the country.
