The Flutie and Anti-Flutie Effect: The Impact of Football Championships and Athletic Malfeasance on the University

Abstract

Athletics can impact the entire university, and there is evidence that administrators’ peer rankings are influenced by athletics as well. We analyze both the positive effect of winning championships and the negative effects of football bowl bans and vacated games. We find that championship effects are positive: increasing peer rankings, alumni giving, and student academic quality. Surprisingly, peer rankings increase the year of the football bowl ban but decrease the year after the ban. Additionally, there is evidence that bowl bans increase a school's acceptance rate and decrease academic quality at the sanctioned university, whereas vacated games lower alumni giving.

The “Cinderella Effect” and “Flutie Effect”: The Impact of Unexpected March Madness Runs and NCAA Men’s Basketball Achievement on School’s Application Pools

“…Similarly, Tucker and Amato (2006) and Caudill et al (2017) concluded that there is no consistent evidence that a highly successful basketball team has a favorable advertising effect on average SAT scores, while being in a major conference has a positive impact on schools' application pools. For football, Tucker (2005) found that athletic success has a robust, statistically significant positive impact on the quality of incoming first-year students after the formation of the Bowl Alliance in 1995, beginning with the incoming first-year class of 1996, Cormier et al (2023) and Eggers et al (2021) found that winning a football championship positively affects peer rankings, alums giving, and student academic quality. Frank (2004) found similar results, but the effects are almost minimal.…”