Touchdowns and test scores: exploring the relationship between athletics and academics

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between college football success and SAT scores using an updated data series on football winning percentages. The finding here of a positive and significant relationship supports the idea that collegiate athletics, namely football, serves the institution's admissions process. Selective institutions are able to enhance the quality of their student populations.

¹ Some studies (e.g. Tucker, 1992; Tucker and Amato, 1993; Bremmer and Kesselring, 1995; Shulman and Bowen, 2001) and surveys (e.g. Art & Science Group of Baltimore, 1991; American Council on Education, 1991) indicate that there is little, or no, relationship between athletic success and the university's educational mission (see Marklein, 2001).

The spinoff benefit of winning teams is such a well-known phenomenon among university administrators that they even have a name for it – ‘the Flutie factor,’ for the 33 percent increase in applications that Doug Flutie helped bring Boston College when he was a football star there in the early 1980s. (Allen, 1999: 2)

Acknowledgements

This article was supported by a URC02 Grant. Any errors are the authors’ own.

Notes

¹ Some studies (e.g. Tucker, 1992; Tucker and Amato, 1993; Bremmer and Kesselring, 1995; Shulman and Bowen, 2001) and surveys (e.g. Art & Science Group of Baltimore, 1991; American Council on Education, 1991) indicate that there is little, or no, relationship between athletic success and the university's educational mission (see Marklein, 2001).

² No a priori suggestion is made regarding this variable, ROLL (see Mixon, 1995). Its inclusion simply produces a model more consistent with that of Mixon (1995).

³ This test is set up as: H₀: β _PHD ≤β _FOOTBALL ; H₁: β _PHD >β _FOOTBALL