Pay for play: the financial value of NCAA football players

ABSTRACT

We explore the financial value of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) football recruits and establish a wage schedule based on the star ratings assigned to high school athletes by an independent talent evaluation agency. Evidence suggests that the contribution of higher-ranking recruits to team wins significantly increases revenues. While the NCAA currently prohibits universities from paying student-athletes, we estimate that if amateurism rules were rescinded and college football players were compensated according to their revenue-generating abilities then five-, four-, three-, and low-star players would be entitled to annual salaries of $799,000, $361,000, $29,000, and $21,000, respectively, in addition to athletic scholarships covering tuition, books, and room and board.

KEYWORDS:

• NCAA Football
• recruiting
• financial value
• wages

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• J31
• J52

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ http://ope.ed.gov/athletics/GetDownloadFile.aspx

² Reported recruiting expenses are aggregated across all sports.

³ http://www.masseyratings.com/

⁴ http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/research/graduation-success-rate

⁵ Not all universities in the data set belong to established conferences in all years. For example, the University of Idaho and New Mexico State University were independent in 2013 and Brigham Young University was independent from 2011 onwards.

⁶ Football programme competitive performance also increases the quantity of applications and therefore improves admissions outcomes (Pope and Pope 2009).