![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
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 of his grant in aid. Students recruit in three scenarios: by recruiting legally, by recruiting legally or with illegal bribes, and by offering wages to athletes in an auction. The authors demonstrate the game's use in a principles course, but it is easily adaptable to other courses. To aid instructors unfamiliar with sports and NCAA recruiting, they include a comprehensive lesson plan with suggested readings and multimedia.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank the participants at the 2016 AEA Conference on Teaching and Research in Economic Education (CTREE) in Atlanta, GA for their valuable input.
Notes
1. In total, 24 out of 34 principles of economics students indicated they would rather study economic inefficiencies through NCAA recruiting than through FCC license allocation. Neither author taught in the surveyed class.
2. This example has also been used to teach cartel theory using the ESPN 30-for-30 documentary on SMU entitled Pony Excess (see Crisp and Mixon Citation2012).
3. The theoretical consequences for coaches' salaries of rent-seeking have been explained by Farmer and Pecorino (Citation2010).
4. Rivals.com is a well-known online sports news resource most known for its rankings of top recruits in football and basketball. There are others, too, such as Scout.com and Future15.com.
5. Instructors also may wish to discuss the emergence of black markets in response to price controls. See, for example, pages 150–54 in Mateer and Coppock's (Citation2014) Principles of Microeconomics.