- Email: [email protected]
College athletics, universities, and the NCAA
The Social Science Journal 44 (2007) 11–22
The 2006 Western Social Science Association Presidential Address
College athletics, universities, and the NCAA Jim Peach ∗ Department of Economics, New Mexico State University, Business Complex Room 234, Las Cruces, NM 88005, USA
The relationship between college athletics programs and the other functions and purposes of universities has been contentious and controversial for more than a century. Shortly after Rutgers and Princeton played the first recorded intercollegiate football game in 1869 and football began to grow in popularity, university officials began to worry about the relationship between football and the academic interests of their universities.1 Social scientists have contributed to and helped shape the debate from the beginning. Veblen (1898) devoted several pages to athletics in his most famous work: The Theory of the Leisure Class. Veblen described what he termed the barbarian and predatory origins of modern sports. The supporters and fans of modern sports, Veblen asserted, argued that participation in sports indoctrinated the youth of the nation with numerous virtues including: a competitive spirit, the necessity of abiding by the rules, leadership qualities that would serve the young well throughout their lives, loyalty, not to mention the virtues associated with healthy exercise. In sharp contrast, Veblen argued that what sports taught the young were attributes better suited to a predatory and barbarian lifestyle—particularly a war-like spirit or the spirit of a hunter. Veblen reserved some of his most vicious prose for college athletics which he found particularly distasteful and damaging to the process and institutions of higher learning. Contemporary social scientists continue to examine college athletics. Economists have been particularly active in analyzing sports and there are now several hundred classes and two textbooks on the economics of sports (Fort, 2003; Leeds & von Allmen, 2005).2 Nevertheless, college athletics have received substantially less attention from the academic community than professional sports. College athletics is an important social institution. Hodgson (2006, p. 2) defines institutions as “systems of established and prevalent social rules that structure social interactions.” In addition to an institution’s rule-setting function, two key characteristics of institutions in the present ∗ Tel.: +1 505 646 2113. E-mail address: [email protected].
0362-3319/$ – see front matter © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.soscij.2006.12.002
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Chart 1. A simplified diagram of institutional interaction in college athletics.
context are: (a) that institutions evolve or change in response to changing circumstances even if such change is often painfully slow and (b) that institutions interact with other institutions. Chart 1 is a simple schematic of some of the other institutions that a typical college athletics department interacts with. The diagram is not meant to be comprehensive. Placing the college athletics department at the center is clearly only a matter of convenience. The diagram is useful, however, in illustrating the complexity of institutional interaction that is apparent when analyzing college athletics. The focus in this paper is on three of the many institutions in
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the diagram: the athletics department, the university and the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA). The NCAA is celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2006. The NCAA was formed in 1906 as the Intercollegiate Athletics Association and adopted the name NCAA in 1910. The original purposes of the NCAA were to set the rules of the game, to bring some sense of order to the often chaotic scheduling of college athletics events, and to give college athletics some degree of public and academic respectability. Conferences came later. Prior to the organization of the NCAA, college athletes formed clubs and often performed all of the management functions of running a team themselves. The NCAA was in one sense an outgrowth of university oversight committees. The NCAA is a large and complex institution with several hundred (approximately 1250) academic institutions, conferences and individuals as members. The governing structure of the NCAA is complex and not always transparent. At the top of the NCAA hierarchy is a president, an executive council consisting of 60 members, and 12 association wide committees. The NCAA is also divided into three Divisions, each with its own Board of Directors, management council, and various committees. Among the three Divisions, there is no doubt that Division I is the most important. The Division I Board of Directors consists of 18 members, 11 of which are elected from the so-called power-conferences. The Division I Management Council is also dominated by the power conferences and there is no illusion of voting equity. Eleven conferences select 33 of the 49 members of the Management Council. The Division I Management Council has enormous power. This is apparent, for example, in its role in rule-setting and enforcement. The academic eligibility standards for Division I schools are based on a complicated formula known as the Academic Progress Report (APR). Essentially each athlete on NCAA sponsored teams has the possibility of gaining (or losing) two points for the team. One point is for eligibility and one point is for continued enrollment. A team’s APR must reach the 925-level (92.5 percent of possible points) to avoid sanctions. This system has been in place only for a couple of years. In February 2006, penalties under the new APR system were announced for Division I schools. Of the 99 teams penalized, only one penalized team (men’s baseball at the University of Texas at Austin) could be accurately described as a team from a “power school.”3 Those who can set the rules do so, and do so to their advantage. The evolution and expansion of the NCAA included the adoption of new functions and purposes. These functions are outlined in the NCAA Constitution and By-laws (NCAA, 2005). The NCAA’s functions are too numerous to list in their entirety, but some of its major functions can be placed into two categories: noncontroversial and controversial. The noncontroversial functions include: (1) rule-making (2) historical record-keeping and (3) conducting championship tournaments—except in football. These three NCAA functions have been described as noncontroversial because they are functions that require some organization to perform them, few would debate that these functions are essential to conducting college athletics, and, because they are perhaps the easiest functions to perform. A common set of rules to play a game is a necessity, but this function does not necessarily require the existence of the NCAA. In many college sports, the task could be solved by adopting the rules of the corresponding professional game. Alternatively, Athletics Directors (ADs) could get together every year or two to make rule changes if any were deemed necessary.
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Record keeping is also a noncontroversial but essential ingredient for conducting college athletics. This is a nontrivial task but one that could be performed by other organizations. Indeed, the private sector currently provides data on college athletics through the Internet and the data are in many cases more complete and easier to access than the official NCAA data. Conducting championships may also be considered an essential function for college sports. The NCAA has not always done a stellar job with this function and has yet to find an adequate solution for the most important revenue sport—college football. If the NCAA were to disappear today, the most likely organizations to conduct championship games would be conferences. Other organizations could also be formed with the sole purpose of conducting such championships and deciding which teams get to participate in championship tournaments. For college basketball, the National Invitational Tournament (NIT) was the “big dance” long before the NCAA was a serious participant. The NIT’s decline to a tournament in which only those teams not offered a ticket to the NCAA tournament could easily be reversed. The controversial functions of the NCAA include: (1) attempts to ensure that college athletes remain amateurs (that is to make certain that they receive low wages for what they do), (2) to maintain or ensure academic integrity and (3) to promote competitive balance. In order to accomplish these controversial functions, the NCAA developed an elaborate governing structure, thousands of rules detailing what universities, athletics departments, student-athletes, professional scouts, alumni, and fans can and cannot do. The manual for Division I NCAA schools (NCAA, 2005) now exceeds 500 pages. Additional manuals are published for Divisions II and III and for NCAA sanctioned championships and certification. In total, the NCAA manuals have more pages than recent international trade agreements. Promoting competitive balance is a major concern of the NCAA.4 Three of the NCAA’s core principles directly address competitive balance. These are core principles 2.10 The Principle of Competitive Equity, 2.11 The Principle Governing Recruiting, and 2.12 The Principle Governing Eligibility. These principles state, in part (NCAA, 2005): • Core Principle 2.10: The structure and programs of the Association and the activities of its members shall promote opportunity for equity in competition to assure that individual student athletes and institutions will not be prevented unfairly from achieving the benefits inherent in participation in intercollegiate athletics. • Core Principle 2.11: The Principle Governing Recruiting. Regulations shall be designed to promote equity among member institutions . . .. • Core Principle 2.12: The Principle Governing Eligibility. Eligibility requirements shall be designed to assure proper emphasis on educational objectives, to promote competitive equity among institutions, and to prevent exploitation of student athletes. The controversial functions of the NCAA are inter-related. In a meaningful sense, the principles governing recruiting and eligibility were adopted by the NCAA in order to promote competitive balance. Indeed, the principle of amateurism and various regulations concerning financial aid are also intended to promote competitive balance. The NCAA is not alone in its concern with competitive balance. Professional sports have also adopted a number of mechanisms in an attempt to ensure competitive balance among teams. Some of these measures include: revenue sharing, salary caps, and the reverse order draft. Competitive balance was the major focus of Major League Baseball’s (2001) Blue Ribbon
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Panel Report. There was a general suspicion among MLB executives that a deterioration of competitive balance in the 1990s was damaging the game. MLB’s obsession with competitive balance occurred despite the fact that the preponderance of the evidence suggests that MLB has never been more competitive than it is now. The NFL has been highly successful in achieving competitive balance through meaningful revenue sharing and salary caps. But why should any sports organization concern itself with the competitive balance issue? This concern probably does not arise because of some inherent sense of fairness or some ingrained belief that “too many” wins by a given team is a sin. It simply stretches the imagination too far to suppose that fans or management of the Boston Celtics thought they were winning too many championships in their glory years of the 1960s. The usual explanation (Berri et al., 2006) for the importance of competitive balance is that sports fans attend games, in part, because of uncertainty of outcome. Fans simply want to know that their team has a chance to win on any given day and a reasonable chance to win a championship. Competitive balance has been a popular topic in the academic literature on the economics of sports. This is particularly true among economists who have developed numerous methods for measuring competitive balance. Many of the statistical measures used by economists to measure competitive balance have been borrowed from other areas. The Gini coefficient is widely used in studies of the distribution of income. Other measures of competitive balance include the standard deviation of win percentages, the ratio of the actual standard deviation to the idealized standard deviation of win percentages, the range of win percentages, and the Herfindahl–Hirshman Index of concentration, and more simple measures such as the number or percent of championships won by a particular team or a small number of teams. None of these measures is entirely satisfactory, but the simple measures used below are probably not much worse than the more complex measures described above. How well has the NCAA done in promoting competitive balance? An answer to this question is crucial to any assessment of the effectiveness of the NCAA as an organization. Any analysis of the competitive balance issue in college athletics must take a long-term perspective. That is, it is a rather silly exercise to examine competitive balance in a single year. For many sports at the college level, there are not enough games to make this a worthwhile exercise and statisticians would be repulsed by the problem of micronumerosity. For the analysis below, the starting point is 1950 and the data presented includes the 2005 season. Some records go back to the 1930s, but it was during the early 1950s that the NCAA made its first serious attempts to impose academic standards and enforce eligibility requirements and financial aid limitations. The analysis of competitive balance also requires the examination of more than a single sport. If only one sport were selected for the analysis, much could be lost. The college sports examined below include football, men’s and women’s basketball, men’s and women’s volleyball, baseball, and softball. Football is the revenue sport in the NCAA, accounting for nearly 75 percent of all college revenue from sports. Football is also the sport that prompted the NCAA to begin imposing financial aid restrictions, academic eligibility standards and similar controls in the 1950s. Not only was football giving the NCAA a bad name among academics, there was a genuine sense that the playing field was far from level. Table 1 contains the distribution of Associated Press (AP) end of season rankings for the highest eight ranked teams. The top eight is used here because it is currently the “top eight” teams that are selected to participate in Bowl
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Table 1 NCAA football teams ranked by number of appearances in AP top eight at end of season: 1950–2005 Team
Number of times in top eight
Percent of total
Cumulative percent
Oklahoma Nebraska Alabama Ohio State Michigan Notre Dame Texas Penn State USC Florida State Miami (FL) Tennessee Auburn Georgia Michigan State UCLA Florida LSU
29 23 22 21 20 18 18 17 17 16 15 15 13 12 12 12 11 11
6.5 5.1 4.9 4.7 4.5 4.0 4.0 3.8 3.8 3.6 3.3 3.3 2.9 2.7 2.7 2.7 2.5 2.5
6.5 11.6 16.5 21.2 25.7 29.7 33.7 37.5 41.3 44.9 48.2 51.6 54.5 57.1 59.8 62.5 65.0 67.5
Source: Author computations from data available at www.ncaa.org.
Championship Series games. The top eight AP ranked teams do not necessarily correspond to “BCS” selections because the teams are selected for BCS appearances based on a complex formula. As can be seen in Table 1, the distribution of top eight rankings has been highly concentrated for more than half a century. Five teams account for a quarter of all top eight finishes, 10 teams account for more than half of all top eight appearances, and 22 teams account for three-quarters of all top eight finishes. If the distribution of top eight football teams is examined by decade (Table 2), there is no apparent trend toward increasing competitive balance. Between six and eight teams account for half or more of all top eight rankings in any given decade. By any reasonable standard, the NCAA has failed in its efforts to improve competitive balance in football. This result is surprising given the various reforms the NCAA has gone through over the decades all designed to improve competitive balance. While other measures of concentration could be Table 2 NCAA football teams ranked 1 through 8 in final AP poll by decade Years
1950–1959 1960–1969 1970–1979 1980–1989 1990–1999 2000–2005 All years Source: See Table 1.
Number of teams accounting for 50 percent or more of all top eight rankings
Number of wins by teams in previous column
Total number of teams in top eight rankings
8 8 6 8 7
40 41 41 41 40
31 32 25 31 24
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244
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Table 3 NCAA men’s basketball final four team distribution: 1950–2006 Team
Number of final four games
Percent of all final four games
Cumulative percent
North Carolina UCLA Duke Kansas Kentucky Louisville Indiana Michigan Cincinnati Michigan State Houston Ohio State Arizona
15 15 14 11 10 8 7 7 6 6 5 5 4
6.7 6.7 6.3 4.9 4.5 3.6 3.1 3.1 2.7 2.7 2.2 2.2 1.8
6.7 13.4 19.6 24.6 29.0 32.6 35.7 38.8 41.5 44.2 46.4 48.7 50.4
Source: Author computations from data available at www.ncaa.org.
used to examine the data, the degree of concentration is so apparent that different results should not be expected. Competitive balance in men’s basketball will be measured here by appearances in the final four of the NCAA tournament since 1950. Only four teams (UCLA, North Carolina, Kansas, and Duke) account for nearly a quarter (24.6 percent) of all final four appearances between 1950 and 2005. Thirteen teams (Table 3) accounted for half of all final four appearances. As with football, the concentration at the top in men’s basketball does not change much by decade (Table 4). Adding a third major men’s sport, baseball does not change the overall picture of competitive balance in men’s sports. The lack of competitive balance in baseball is apparent in Table 5 which displays the concentration of appearances in the championship game of the College World Series, held annually in Omaha, Nebraska. Three teams (USC, Texas, and Arizona State) account for 29.6 percent of all appearances in the championship game of the CWS since its inception in 1947. Seven teams (add Arizona, Miami (FL), Oklahoma State and Stanford) account for 50 percent of all championship games since 1947. Fourteen teams account for just under three-quarters of all championship games. Table 4 NCAA men’s basketball final four appearances by decade Years
Number of teams to reach 25th percentile
50th percentile
75th percentile
1950–1959 1960–1969 1970–1979 1980–1989 1990–1999 2000–2006 All years
4 2 3 3 2 3 4
9 5 8 8 6 7 13
20 11 18 16 13 14
Source: See Table 3.
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Table 5 NCAA college world series championship games: 1947–2005 Team
Number of championship games
Percent of all championship games
Cumulative percent
USC Texas Arizona State Arizona Miami (FL) Oklahoma State Stanford Cal St. Fullerton LSU Missouri Wichita St. Minnesota South Carolina Alabama
14 11 10 6 6 6 6 5 5 4 4 3 3 2
11.9 9.3 8.5 5.1 5.1 5.1 5.1 4.2 4.2 3.4 3.4 2.5 2.5 1.7
11.9 21.2 29.7 34.7 39.8 44.9 50.0 54.2 58.4 61.9 65.3 67.8 70.3 72.0
Source: Author computations from NCAA Spring Record Book (2005).
Men’s Volleyball championship game appearances are also highly concentrated (Table 6). The NCAA has sponsored men’s volleyball championships since 1970. Of the 72 possible appearances in the championship games, UCLA and Pepperdine have been in the game 34 times or 47.2 percent of all possible appearances. Five teams (UCLA, Pepperdine, USC, Long Beach State, and BYU) account for 75.0 percent of all possible championship game appearances. In brief, the distribution at the top in four major NCAA men’s sports is highly concentrated and there is no apparent trend that competitive balance in these sports is improving as a result of NCAA imposed regulations. Nor should it be surprising to anyone that many of the same consistently winning teams are winners in more than one sport. That is the meaning of a power school. Table 6 NCAA men’s volleyball championship games: 1970–2005 Team
Number of championship games
Percent of all championship games
Cumulative percent
UCLA Pepperdine USC Long Beach State BYU UCSB Penn State Stanford Hawaii Ohio State SDSU Cal St. Northridge Lewis
24 10 10 6 4 4 3 3 2 2 2 1 1
33.3 13.9 13.9 8.3 5.6 5.6 4.2 4.2 2.8 2.8 2.8 1.4 1.4
33.3 47.2 61.1 69.4 75.0 80.6 84.7 88.9 91.7 94.4 97.2 98.6 100.0
Source: Author computations from NCAA Spring Record Book (2005).
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Table 7 NCAA women’s basketball final four appearances: 1982–2005 Team
Number of final four games
Percent of all final four games
Cumulative percent
Tennessee Louisiana Tech Connecticut Stanford Georgia Texas Duke Auburn Long Beach State Old Dominion Purdue Virginia Cheyney LSU
16 11 9 6 5 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 2 2
16.0 11.0 9.0 6.0 5.0 4.0 4.0 3.0 3.0 3.0 3.0 3.0 2.0 2.0
16.0 27.0 36.0 42.0 47.0 51.0 55.0 58.0 61.0 64.0 67.0 70.0 72.0 74.0
Source: Author computations from NCAA Spring Record Book (2005).
Are NCAA women’s sports more competitively balanced than the three major men’s sports? The answer is no. Three women’s sports (basketball, softball, and volleyball) are examined below, but some explanation is in order. The NCAA was a reluctant participant in the gender equality movement and did not begin sponsoring championship tournaments in women’s sports until 1980. The pressure to allow women equal access to competitive sports arose from Title IX of the 1972 Educational Amendments to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. There is no mention of women’s sports in Title IX which prohibits federal funding going to universities that discriminate against women. The U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) interpreted Title IX to mean that women’s sports should be treated equally with men’s sports or universities could lose all federal funding—including research grants, student loan funding, and other assistance to universities. The Department of Justice concurred with HEW’s interpretation of Title IX. Only after it was clear that the Justice Department was serious about gender equality did the NCAA begin its efforts to promote competitive women’s sports. Competitive balance in women’s basketball is measured here using the same measure as for men’s basketball—although for a shorter time period (1982–2005). Two teams (Tennessee and Louisiana Tech) account for 27.0 percent of final four appearances in Women’s basketball. Six teams (add Connecticut, Stanford, Texas, and Georgia) account for 51.0 percent of all final four appearances (Table 7). Women’s softball championship tournaments have also been held since 1982. As with baseball, the measure used here is appearances in the final championship game. One softball team (UCLA) accounts for 37.5 percent of all championship game appearances since 1982. Two teams (UCLA and Arizona) account for 58.3 percent of the championship games. And, seven teams account for 97.9 percent of all championship game appearances (Table 8). Women’s volleyball championship games (conducted by the NCAA since 1981) have also been dominated by only a few teams. Three teams (Stanford, UCLA, and Hawaii) have appeared in 47.9 percent of all such championship games (Table 9). Six teams (Stanford, UCLA, Hawaii,
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Table 8 NCAA women’s softball championship game appearances: 1982–2005 Team
Number of games
Percent of all championship games
Cumulative percent
UCLA Arizona Fresno St. Texas A&M California Cal St. Fullerton Washington Cal St. Northridge Michigan Nebraska Oklahoma
18 10 5 4 3 2 2 1 1 1 1
37.5 20.8 10.4 8.3 6.3 4.2 4.2 2.1 2.1 2.1 2.1
37.5 58.3 68.8 77.1 83.3 87.5 97.9 93.8 95.8 97.9 100.0
Source: Author computations from NCAA Spring Record Book (2005).
Long Beach State, Nebraska, and Penn State) have appeared in 75.0 percent of the championship games. Only 12 teams have ever appeared in the NCAA women’s volleyball championship game and 3 of those (Florida, Minnesota, and Wisconsin) have only appeared once. A brief summary is in order. Four major men’s sports and three major women’s sports do not exhibit a great deal of competitive balance. The imposition of NCAA rules and restrictions regarding eligibility, financial aid and amateurism apparently made little impact on the playing field. That is, the data show no apparent improvement in competitive balance in major collegiate sports over the last half-century. Colleges and universities have spent a great deal of money enforcing these restrictions and indeed, the cost of devising these restrictions at NCAA meetings and behind the scenes negotiations is also high. A reasonable question to ask is whether or not the distribution of top teams would have changed a great deal if these restrictions were not in place. Could the resources spent on rule-making and enforcement have been spent better on something else? There is no definitive way to answer these questions. There is no possibility, Table 9 NCAA women’s volleyball championship games: 1981–2005 Team
Number of games
Percent of all championship games
Cumulative percent
Stanford UCLA Hawaii Long Beach State Nebraska Penn State USC Pacific Texas Florida Minnesota Wisconsin
11 7 5 5 4 4 4 3 2 1 1 1
22.9 14.6 10.4 10.4 8.3 8.3 8.3 6.3 4.2 2.1 2.1 2.1
22.9 37.5 47.9 58.3 66.7 75.0 83.3 89.6 93.8 95.8 97.9 100.0
Source: NCAA Fall Record Book.
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for example, of comparing NCAA college sports with a control group of college sports that did not impose restrictions. Some speculation, however, is appropriate.
Speculation If there were no NCAA restrictions on financial aid or academic eligibility standards, several things would probably occur. First, alumni would probably donate more to college level athletics programs without the NCAA restrictions. That is, they could donate freely either to the athletes or to the institutions of higher learning with an expectation that the money would be spent to improve their favorite team. Second, student athletes would probably be paid more than they are paid under the current system.5 Indeed it is likely that if the NCAA financial restrictions were not in place, colleges and universities would need to compete openly with financial incentives for the services of prospective student athletes. Third, there is little evidence that the NCAA rules and regulations have promoted competitive balance in college athletics and no a priori reason to think that eliminating the rules would change the competitive balance situation. Would such price competition alter the distribution of playing talent among academic institutions? No one knows for certain, but it is worth noting that the power schools in football were the power schools before the imposition of NCAA regulations. From an economic perspective, open bidding for athletes is similar to the situation in Major League Baseball (MLB) when the reserve clause was eliminated and the era of free agency began. Sports economists rely heavily on the Rottenberg invariance principle when analyzing free agency.6 Essentially, this principle suggests that free agency would not affect the distribution of talent but would affect the distribution of funds between owners and players. There is also the possibility that eliminating the NCAA eligibility and financial restrictions might increase competitive balance, particularly in football. In an unrestricted system, wages for first-team student athletes at nonpower schools might be higher than wages for second or third team talent at the power schools. So, it is possible that the distribution of student athlete talent could change. Fourth, colleges and universities could save a great deal of money. The money cost of participating in the NCAA and in complying with its many regulations is a large but unknown figure. University delegations to NCAA meetings consist of at least an Athletic Director, a university president (since 1997), a faculty representative, and others. In addition, there is the on-going process and associated costs of enforcement and compliance on campus. Even on a relatively small campus, this can involve full-time staff members and faculty oversight committees. Fifth, university administrators would be forced to make hard decisions instead of relying on the protective shield of NCAA regulations. What hard decisions? Universities would be forced to establish their own academic eligibility requirements for student athletes. Sixth, if the NCAA were to disappear there would be no apparent adverse consequences for women’s sports. After all, it was Title IX and not the NCAA that provided the incentive for academic institutions to devote more resources to women’s sports.
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Seventh, TV revenues might increase. TV revenue, especially for football, is a complex issue. The NCAA has never fully come to grips with this issue involving laws such as the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, conferences, bowl-games, conferences, and the distribution of revenues among universities. That is why we have the BCS games. Eighth, there is no reason to expect that attendance at major sporting events would decline. Fans do not attend games or watch them on TV to see the NCAA in action. It might be fun, however, to broadcast the annual convention of the NCAA so that their decisions were truly public. Is the NCAA necessary? When an institution fails to perform basic functions, it may be time to alter that institution. Who could change or abolish the NCAA? The universities could do so. The universities are the NCAA. Many others have suggested various reforms for the NCAA (Fort, 2003; Zimbalist, 1999). What is being suggested here goes beyond reform of the NCAA. The NCAA serves no useful purpose and should be abolished. Notes 1. Rutgers defeated Princeton by a score of 6 to 4 on November 6, 1869. 2. In the best spirit of competition, both textbooks are published by the same company, cover the same material and are sold at the same price. 3. The penalties referred to are the contemporaneous penalties for 2005–2006. Penalties are assessed for a team not schools. Some universities were penalized in more than one sport. There are also historical penalties. A complete list may be found at: http://www2.ncaa.org/portal/academics and athletes/education and research/ academic reform/penalties per school.pdf. 4. The term competitive balance is being used here to mean “relatively even competition” among teams. 5. Despite NCAA imposed financial restrictions and an effort to ensure that student athletes remain amateurs, student athletes are “paid” with scholarships and other benefits. 6. Rodney Fort, 2003, p. 446), states a Rottenberg invariance principle for college athletics: “The distribution of talent in a college sport is invariant with respect to who gets the revenue.” References Berri, David J., Schmidt, Martin B., & Brook, Stacey L. (2006). The Wages of Wins: Taking measure of the many myths in modern sport. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Fort, R. D. (2003). Sports economics. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Educational Publishing. Hodgson, G. M. (2006). What are institutions? Journal of Economic Issues, 35(1), 1–25. Leeds, M., & von Allmen, P. (2005). The economics of sports (2nd ed.). Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.. National Collegiate Athletics Association. (2005). 2005–2006 NCAA division I manual. Indianapolis: NCAA Publications. Veblen, T. (1898). The theory of the leisure class. New York: Macmillian. Zimbalist, Andrew S. (1999). Unpaid Professionals: Commercialization and conflict in big-time college sports. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
The 2006 Western Social Science Association Presidential Address
College athletics, universities, and the NCAA Jim Peach ∗ Department of Economics, New Mexico State University, Business Complex Room 234, Las Cruces, NM 88005, USA
The relationship between college athletics programs and the other functions and purposes of universities has been contentious and controversial for more than a century. Shortly after Rutgers and Princeton played the first recorded intercollegiate football game in 1869 and football began to grow in popularity, university officials began to worry about the relationship between football and the academic interests of their universities.1 Social scientists have contributed to and helped shape the debate from the beginning. Veblen (1898) devoted several pages to athletics in his most famous work: The Theory of the Leisure Class. Veblen described what he termed the barbarian and predatory origins of modern sports. The supporters and fans of modern sports, Veblen asserted, argued that participation in sports indoctrinated the youth of the nation with numerous virtues including: a competitive spirit, the necessity of abiding by the rules, leadership qualities that would serve the young well throughout their lives, loyalty, not to mention the virtues associated with healthy exercise. In sharp contrast, Veblen argued that what sports taught the young were attributes better suited to a predatory and barbarian lifestyle—particularly a war-like spirit or the spirit of a hunter. Veblen reserved some of his most vicious prose for college athletics which he found particularly distasteful and damaging to the process and institutions of higher learning. Contemporary social scientists continue to examine college athletics. Economists have been particularly active in analyzing sports and there are now several hundred classes and two textbooks on the economics of sports (Fort, 2003; Leeds & von Allmen, 2005).2 Nevertheless, college athletics have received substantially less attention from the academic community than professional sports. College athletics is an important social institution. Hodgson (2006, p. 2) defines institutions as “systems of established and prevalent social rules that structure social interactions.” In addition to an institution’s rule-setting function, two key characteristics of institutions in the present ∗ Tel.: +1 505 646 2113. E-mail address: [email protected].
0362-3319/$ – see front matter © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.soscij.2006.12.002
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Chart 1. A simplified diagram of institutional interaction in college athletics.
context are: (a) that institutions evolve or change in response to changing circumstances even if such change is often painfully slow and (b) that institutions interact with other institutions. Chart 1 is a simple schematic of some of the other institutions that a typical college athletics department interacts with. The diagram is not meant to be comprehensive. Placing the college athletics department at the center is clearly only a matter of convenience. The diagram is useful, however, in illustrating the complexity of institutional interaction that is apparent when analyzing college athletics. The focus in this paper is on three of the many institutions in
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the diagram: the athletics department, the university and the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA). The NCAA is celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2006. The NCAA was formed in 1906 as the Intercollegiate Athletics Association and adopted the name NCAA in 1910. The original purposes of the NCAA were to set the rules of the game, to bring some sense of order to the often chaotic scheduling of college athletics events, and to give college athletics some degree of public and academic respectability. Conferences came later. Prior to the organization of the NCAA, college athletes formed clubs and often performed all of the management functions of running a team themselves. The NCAA was in one sense an outgrowth of university oversight committees. The NCAA is a large and complex institution with several hundred (approximately 1250) academic institutions, conferences and individuals as members. The governing structure of the NCAA is complex and not always transparent. At the top of the NCAA hierarchy is a president, an executive council consisting of 60 members, and 12 association wide committees. The NCAA is also divided into three Divisions, each with its own Board of Directors, management council, and various committees. Among the three Divisions, there is no doubt that Division I is the most important. The Division I Board of Directors consists of 18 members, 11 of which are elected from the so-called power-conferences. The Division I Management Council is also dominated by the power conferences and there is no illusion of voting equity. Eleven conferences select 33 of the 49 members of the Management Council. The Division I Management Council has enormous power. This is apparent, for example, in its role in rule-setting and enforcement. The academic eligibility standards for Division I schools are based on a complicated formula known as the Academic Progress Report (APR). Essentially each athlete on NCAA sponsored teams has the possibility of gaining (or losing) two points for the team. One point is for eligibility and one point is for continued enrollment. A team’s APR must reach the 925-level (92.5 percent of possible points) to avoid sanctions. This system has been in place only for a couple of years. In February 2006, penalties under the new APR system were announced for Division I schools. Of the 99 teams penalized, only one penalized team (men’s baseball at the University of Texas at Austin) could be accurately described as a team from a “power school.”3 Those who can set the rules do so, and do so to their advantage. The evolution and expansion of the NCAA included the adoption of new functions and purposes. These functions are outlined in the NCAA Constitution and By-laws (NCAA, 2005). The NCAA’s functions are too numerous to list in their entirety, but some of its major functions can be placed into two categories: noncontroversial and controversial. The noncontroversial functions include: (1) rule-making (2) historical record-keeping and (3) conducting championship tournaments—except in football. These three NCAA functions have been described as noncontroversial because they are functions that require some organization to perform them, few would debate that these functions are essential to conducting college athletics, and, because they are perhaps the easiest functions to perform. A common set of rules to play a game is a necessity, but this function does not necessarily require the existence of the NCAA. In many college sports, the task could be solved by adopting the rules of the corresponding professional game. Alternatively, Athletics Directors (ADs) could get together every year or two to make rule changes if any were deemed necessary.
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Record keeping is also a noncontroversial but essential ingredient for conducting college athletics. This is a nontrivial task but one that could be performed by other organizations. Indeed, the private sector currently provides data on college athletics through the Internet and the data are in many cases more complete and easier to access than the official NCAA data. Conducting championships may also be considered an essential function for college sports. The NCAA has not always done a stellar job with this function and has yet to find an adequate solution for the most important revenue sport—college football. If the NCAA were to disappear today, the most likely organizations to conduct championship games would be conferences. Other organizations could also be formed with the sole purpose of conducting such championships and deciding which teams get to participate in championship tournaments. For college basketball, the National Invitational Tournament (NIT) was the “big dance” long before the NCAA was a serious participant. The NIT’s decline to a tournament in which only those teams not offered a ticket to the NCAA tournament could easily be reversed. The controversial functions of the NCAA include: (1) attempts to ensure that college athletes remain amateurs (that is to make certain that they receive low wages for what they do), (2) to maintain or ensure academic integrity and (3) to promote competitive balance. In order to accomplish these controversial functions, the NCAA developed an elaborate governing structure, thousands of rules detailing what universities, athletics departments, student-athletes, professional scouts, alumni, and fans can and cannot do. The manual for Division I NCAA schools (NCAA, 2005) now exceeds 500 pages. Additional manuals are published for Divisions II and III and for NCAA sanctioned championships and certification. In total, the NCAA manuals have more pages than recent international trade agreements. Promoting competitive balance is a major concern of the NCAA.4 Three of the NCAA’s core principles directly address competitive balance. These are core principles 2.10 The Principle of Competitive Equity, 2.11 The Principle Governing Recruiting, and 2.12 The Principle Governing Eligibility. These principles state, in part (NCAA, 2005): • Core Principle 2.10: The structure and programs of the Association and the activities of its members shall promote opportunity for equity in competition to assure that individual student athletes and institutions will not be prevented unfairly from achieving the benefits inherent in participation in intercollegiate athletics. • Core Principle 2.11: The Principle Governing Recruiting. Regulations shall be designed to promote equity among member institutions . . .. • Core Principle 2.12: The Principle Governing Eligibility. Eligibility requirements shall be designed to assure proper emphasis on educational objectives, to promote competitive equity among institutions, and to prevent exploitation of student athletes. The controversial functions of the NCAA are inter-related. In a meaningful sense, the principles governing recruiting and eligibility were adopted by the NCAA in order to promote competitive balance. Indeed, the principle of amateurism and various regulations concerning financial aid are also intended to promote competitive balance. The NCAA is not alone in its concern with competitive balance. Professional sports have also adopted a number of mechanisms in an attempt to ensure competitive balance among teams. Some of these measures include: revenue sharing, salary caps, and the reverse order draft. Competitive balance was the major focus of Major League Baseball’s (2001) Blue Ribbon
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Panel Report. There was a general suspicion among MLB executives that a deterioration of competitive balance in the 1990s was damaging the game. MLB’s obsession with competitive balance occurred despite the fact that the preponderance of the evidence suggests that MLB has never been more competitive than it is now. The NFL has been highly successful in achieving competitive balance through meaningful revenue sharing and salary caps. But why should any sports organization concern itself with the competitive balance issue? This concern probably does not arise because of some inherent sense of fairness or some ingrained belief that “too many” wins by a given team is a sin. It simply stretches the imagination too far to suppose that fans or management of the Boston Celtics thought they were winning too many championships in their glory years of the 1960s. The usual explanation (Berri et al., 2006) for the importance of competitive balance is that sports fans attend games, in part, because of uncertainty of outcome. Fans simply want to know that their team has a chance to win on any given day and a reasonable chance to win a championship. Competitive balance has been a popular topic in the academic literature on the economics of sports. This is particularly true among economists who have developed numerous methods for measuring competitive balance. Many of the statistical measures used by economists to measure competitive balance have been borrowed from other areas. The Gini coefficient is widely used in studies of the distribution of income. Other measures of competitive balance include the standard deviation of win percentages, the ratio of the actual standard deviation to the idealized standard deviation of win percentages, the range of win percentages, and the Herfindahl–Hirshman Index of concentration, and more simple measures such as the number or percent of championships won by a particular team or a small number of teams. None of these measures is entirely satisfactory, but the simple measures used below are probably not much worse than the more complex measures described above. How well has the NCAA done in promoting competitive balance? An answer to this question is crucial to any assessment of the effectiveness of the NCAA as an organization. Any analysis of the competitive balance issue in college athletics must take a long-term perspective. That is, it is a rather silly exercise to examine competitive balance in a single year. For many sports at the college level, there are not enough games to make this a worthwhile exercise and statisticians would be repulsed by the problem of micronumerosity. For the analysis below, the starting point is 1950 and the data presented includes the 2005 season. Some records go back to the 1930s, but it was during the early 1950s that the NCAA made its first serious attempts to impose academic standards and enforce eligibility requirements and financial aid limitations. The analysis of competitive balance also requires the examination of more than a single sport. If only one sport were selected for the analysis, much could be lost. The college sports examined below include football, men’s and women’s basketball, men’s and women’s volleyball, baseball, and softball. Football is the revenue sport in the NCAA, accounting for nearly 75 percent of all college revenue from sports. Football is also the sport that prompted the NCAA to begin imposing financial aid restrictions, academic eligibility standards and similar controls in the 1950s. Not only was football giving the NCAA a bad name among academics, there was a genuine sense that the playing field was far from level. Table 1 contains the distribution of Associated Press (AP) end of season rankings for the highest eight ranked teams. The top eight is used here because it is currently the “top eight” teams that are selected to participate in Bowl
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Table 1 NCAA football teams ranked by number of appearances in AP top eight at end of season: 1950–2005 Team
Number of times in top eight
Percent of total
Cumulative percent
Oklahoma Nebraska Alabama Ohio State Michigan Notre Dame Texas Penn State USC Florida State Miami (FL) Tennessee Auburn Georgia Michigan State UCLA Florida LSU
29 23 22 21 20 18 18 17 17 16 15 15 13 12 12 12 11 11
6.5 5.1 4.9 4.7 4.5 4.0 4.0 3.8 3.8 3.6 3.3 3.3 2.9 2.7 2.7 2.7 2.5 2.5
6.5 11.6 16.5 21.2 25.7 29.7 33.7 37.5 41.3 44.9 48.2 51.6 54.5 57.1 59.8 62.5 65.0 67.5
Source: Author computations from data available at www.ncaa.org.
Championship Series games. The top eight AP ranked teams do not necessarily correspond to “BCS” selections because the teams are selected for BCS appearances based on a complex formula. As can be seen in Table 1, the distribution of top eight rankings has been highly concentrated for more than half a century. Five teams account for a quarter of all top eight finishes, 10 teams account for more than half of all top eight appearances, and 22 teams account for three-quarters of all top eight finishes. If the distribution of top eight football teams is examined by decade (Table 2), there is no apparent trend toward increasing competitive balance. Between six and eight teams account for half or more of all top eight rankings in any given decade. By any reasonable standard, the NCAA has failed in its efforts to improve competitive balance in football. This result is surprising given the various reforms the NCAA has gone through over the decades all designed to improve competitive balance. While other measures of concentration could be Table 2 NCAA football teams ranked 1 through 8 in final AP poll by decade Years
1950–1959 1960–1969 1970–1979 1980–1989 1990–1999 2000–2005 All years Source: See Table 1.
Number of teams accounting for 50 percent or more of all top eight rankings
Number of wins by teams in previous column
Total number of teams in top eight rankings
8 8 6 8 7
40 41 41 41 40
31 32 25 31 24
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Table 3 NCAA men’s basketball final four team distribution: 1950–2006 Team
Number of final four games
Percent of all final four games
Cumulative percent
North Carolina UCLA Duke Kansas Kentucky Louisville Indiana Michigan Cincinnati Michigan State Houston Ohio State Arizona
15 15 14 11 10 8 7 7 6 6 5 5 4
6.7 6.7 6.3 4.9 4.5 3.6 3.1 3.1 2.7 2.7 2.2 2.2 1.8
6.7 13.4 19.6 24.6 29.0 32.6 35.7 38.8 41.5 44.2 46.4 48.7 50.4
Source: Author computations from data available at www.ncaa.org.
used to examine the data, the degree of concentration is so apparent that different results should not be expected. Competitive balance in men’s basketball will be measured here by appearances in the final four of the NCAA tournament since 1950. Only four teams (UCLA, North Carolina, Kansas, and Duke) account for nearly a quarter (24.6 percent) of all final four appearances between 1950 and 2005. Thirteen teams (Table 3) accounted for half of all final four appearances. As with football, the concentration at the top in men’s basketball does not change much by decade (Table 4). Adding a third major men’s sport, baseball does not change the overall picture of competitive balance in men’s sports. The lack of competitive balance in baseball is apparent in Table 5 which displays the concentration of appearances in the championship game of the College World Series, held annually in Omaha, Nebraska. Three teams (USC, Texas, and Arizona State) account for 29.6 percent of all appearances in the championship game of the CWS since its inception in 1947. Seven teams (add Arizona, Miami (FL), Oklahoma State and Stanford) account for 50 percent of all championship games since 1947. Fourteen teams account for just under three-quarters of all championship games. Table 4 NCAA men’s basketball final four appearances by decade Years
Number of teams to reach 25th percentile
50th percentile
75th percentile
1950–1959 1960–1969 1970–1979 1980–1989 1990–1999 2000–2006 All years
4 2 3 3 2 3 4
9 5 8 8 6 7 13
20 11 18 16 13 14
Source: See Table 3.
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Table 5 NCAA college world series championship games: 1947–2005 Team
Number of championship games
Percent of all championship games
Cumulative percent
USC Texas Arizona State Arizona Miami (FL) Oklahoma State Stanford Cal St. Fullerton LSU Missouri Wichita St. Minnesota South Carolina Alabama
14 11 10 6 6 6 6 5 5 4 4 3 3 2
11.9 9.3 8.5 5.1 5.1 5.1 5.1 4.2 4.2 3.4 3.4 2.5 2.5 1.7
11.9 21.2 29.7 34.7 39.8 44.9 50.0 54.2 58.4 61.9 65.3 67.8 70.3 72.0
Source: Author computations from NCAA Spring Record Book (2005).
Men’s Volleyball championship game appearances are also highly concentrated (Table 6). The NCAA has sponsored men’s volleyball championships since 1970. Of the 72 possible appearances in the championship games, UCLA and Pepperdine have been in the game 34 times or 47.2 percent of all possible appearances. Five teams (UCLA, Pepperdine, USC, Long Beach State, and BYU) account for 75.0 percent of all possible championship game appearances. In brief, the distribution at the top in four major NCAA men’s sports is highly concentrated and there is no apparent trend that competitive balance in these sports is improving as a result of NCAA imposed regulations. Nor should it be surprising to anyone that many of the same consistently winning teams are winners in more than one sport. That is the meaning of a power school. Table 6 NCAA men’s volleyball championship games: 1970–2005 Team
Number of championship games
Percent of all championship games
Cumulative percent
UCLA Pepperdine USC Long Beach State BYU UCSB Penn State Stanford Hawaii Ohio State SDSU Cal St. Northridge Lewis
24 10 10 6 4 4 3 3 2 2 2 1 1
33.3 13.9 13.9 8.3 5.6 5.6 4.2 4.2 2.8 2.8 2.8 1.4 1.4
33.3 47.2 61.1 69.4 75.0 80.6 84.7 88.9 91.7 94.4 97.2 98.6 100.0
Source: Author computations from NCAA Spring Record Book (2005).
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Table 7 NCAA women’s basketball final four appearances: 1982–2005 Team
Number of final four games
Percent of all final four games
Cumulative percent
Tennessee Louisiana Tech Connecticut Stanford Georgia Texas Duke Auburn Long Beach State Old Dominion Purdue Virginia Cheyney LSU
16 11 9 6 5 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 2 2
16.0 11.0 9.0 6.0 5.0 4.0 4.0 3.0 3.0 3.0 3.0 3.0 2.0 2.0
16.0 27.0 36.0 42.0 47.0 51.0 55.0 58.0 61.0 64.0 67.0 70.0 72.0 74.0
Source: Author computations from NCAA Spring Record Book (2005).
Are NCAA women’s sports more competitively balanced than the three major men’s sports? The answer is no. Three women’s sports (basketball, softball, and volleyball) are examined below, but some explanation is in order. The NCAA was a reluctant participant in the gender equality movement and did not begin sponsoring championship tournaments in women’s sports until 1980. The pressure to allow women equal access to competitive sports arose from Title IX of the 1972 Educational Amendments to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. There is no mention of women’s sports in Title IX which prohibits federal funding going to universities that discriminate against women. The U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) interpreted Title IX to mean that women’s sports should be treated equally with men’s sports or universities could lose all federal funding—including research grants, student loan funding, and other assistance to universities. The Department of Justice concurred with HEW’s interpretation of Title IX. Only after it was clear that the Justice Department was serious about gender equality did the NCAA begin its efforts to promote competitive women’s sports. Competitive balance in women’s basketball is measured here using the same measure as for men’s basketball—although for a shorter time period (1982–2005). Two teams (Tennessee and Louisiana Tech) account for 27.0 percent of final four appearances in Women’s basketball. Six teams (add Connecticut, Stanford, Texas, and Georgia) account for 51.0 percent of all final four appearances (Table 7). Women’s softball championship tournaments have also been held since 1982. As with baseball, the measure used here is appearances in the final championship game. One softball team (UCLA) accounts for 37.5 percent of all championship game appearances since 1982. Two teams (UCLA and Arizona) account for 58.3 percent of the championship games. And, seven teams account for 97.9 percent of all championship game appearances (Table 8). Women’s volleyball championship games (conducted by the NCAA since 1981) have also been dominated by only a few teams. Three teams (Stanford, UCLA, and Hawaii) have appeared in 47.9 percent of all such championship games (Table 9). Six teams (Stanford, UCLA, Hawaii,
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Table 8 NCAA women’s softball championship game appearances: 1982–2005 Team
Number of games
Percent of all championship games
Cumulative percent
UCLA Arizona Fresno St. Texas A&M California Cal St. Fullerton Washington Cal St. Northridge Michigan Nebraska Oklahoma
18 10 5 4 3 2 2 1 1 1 1
37.5 20.8 10.4 8.3 6.3 4.2 4.2 2.1 2.1 2.1 2.1
37.5 58.3 68.8 77.1 83.3 87.5 97.9 93.8 95.8 97.9 100.0
Source: Author computations from NCAA Spring Record Book (2005).
Long Beach State, Nebraska, and Penn State) have appeared in 75.0 percent of the championship games. Only 12 teams have ever appeared in the NCAA women’s volleyball championship game and 3 of those (Florida, Minnesota, and Wisconsin) have only appeared once. A brief summary is in order. Four major men’s sports and three major women’s sports do not exhibit a great deal of competitive balance. The imposition of NCAA rules and restrictions regarding eligibility, financial aid and amateurism apparently made little impact on the playing field. That is, the data show no apparent improvement in competitive balance in major collegiate sports over the last half-century. Colleges and universities have spent a great deal of money enforcing these restrictions and indeed, the cost of devising these restrictions at NCAA meetings and behind the scenes negotiations is also high. A reasonable question to ask is whether or not the distribution of top teams would have changed a great deal if these restrictions were not in place. Could the resources spent on rule-making and enforcement have been spent better on something else? There is no definitive way to answer these questions. There is no possibility, Table 9 NCAA women’s volleyball championship games: 1981–2005 Team
Number of games
Percent of all championship games
Cumulative percent
Stanford UCLA Hawaii Long Beach State Nebraska Penn State USC Pacific Texas Florida Minnesota Wisconsin
11 7 5 5 4 4 4 3 2 1 1 1
22.9 14.6 10.4 10.4 8.3 8.3 8.3 6.3 4.2 2.1 2.1 2.1
22.9 37.5 47.9 58.3 66.7 75.0 83.3 89.6 93.8 95.8 97.9 100.0
Source: NCAA Fall Record Book.
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for example, of comparing NCAA college sports with a control group of college sports that did not impose restrictions. Some speculation, however, is appropriate.
Speculation If there were no NCAA restrictions on financial aid or academic eligibility standards, several things would probably occur. First, alumni would probably donate more to college level athletics programs without the NCAA restrictions. That is, they could donate freely either to the athletes or to the institutions of higher learning with an expectation that the money would be spent to improve their favorite team. Second, student athletes would probably be paid more than they are paid under the current system.5 Indeed it is likely that if the NCAA financial restrictions were not in place, colleges and universities would need to compete openly with financial incentives for the services of prospective student athletes. Third, there is little evidence that the NCAA rules and regulations have promoted competitive balance in college athletics and no a priori reason to think that eliminating the rules would change the competitive balance situation. Would such price competition alter the distribution of playing talent among academic institutions? No one knows for certain, but it is worth noting that the power schools in football were the power schools before the imposition of NCAA regulations. From an economic perspective, open bidding for athletes is similar to the situation in Major League Baseball (MLB) when the reserve clause was eliminated and the era of free agency began. Sports economists rely heavily on the Rottenberg invariance principle when analyzing free agency.6 Essentially, this principle suggests that free agency would not affect the distribution of talent but would affect the distribution of funds between owners and players. There is also the possibility that eliminating the NCAA eligibility and financial restrictions might increase competitive balance, particularly in football. In an unrestricted system, wages for first-team student athletes at nonpower schools might be higher than wages for second or third team talent at the power schools. So, it is possible that the distribution of student athlete talent could change. Fourth, colleges and universities could save a great deal of money. The money cost of participating in the NCAA and in complying with its many regulations is a large but unknown figure. University delegations to NCAA meetings consist of at least an Athletic Director, a university president (since 1997), a faculty representative, and others. In addition, there is the on-going process and associated costs of enforcement and compliance on campus. Even on a relatively small campus, this can involve full-time staff members and faculty oversight committees. Fifth, university administrators would be forced to make hard decisions instead of relying on the protective shield of NCAA regulations. What hard decisions? Universities would be forced to establish their own academic eligibility requirements for student athletes. Sixth, if the NCAA were to disappear there would be no apparent adverse consequences for women’s sports. After all, it was Title IX and not the NCAA that provided the incentive for academic institutions to devote more resources to women’s sports.
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Seventh, TV revenues might increase. TV revenue, especially for football, is a complex issue. The NCAA has never fully come to grips with this issue involving laws such as the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, conferences, bowl-games, conferences, and the distribution of revenues among universities. That is why we have the BCS games. Eighth, there is no reason to expect that attendance at major sporting events would decline. Fans do not attend games or watch them on TV to see the NCAA in action. It might be fun, however, to broadcast the annual convention of the NCAA so that their decisions were truly public. Is the NCAA necessary? When an institution fails to perform basic functions, it may be time to alter that institution. Who could change or abolish the NCAA? The universities could do so. The universities are the NCAA. Many others have suggested various reforms for the NCAA (Fort, 2003; Zimbalist, 1999). What is being suggested here goes beyond reform of the NCAA. The NCAA serves no useful purpose and should be abolished. Notes 1. Rutgers defeated Princeton by a score of 6 to 4 on November 6, 1869. 2. In the best spirit of competition, both textbooks are published by the same company, cover the same material and are sold at the same price. 3. The penalties referred to are the contemporaneous penalties for 2005–2006. Penalties are assessed for a team not schools. Some universities were penalized in more than one sport. There are also historical penalties. A complete list may be found at: http://www2.ncaa.org/portal/academics and athletes/education and research/ academic reform/penalties per school.pdf. 4. The term competitive balance is being used here to mean “relatively even competition” among teams. 5. Despite NCAA imposed financial restrictions and an effort to ensure that student athletes remain amateurs, student athletes are “paid” with scholarships and other benefits. 6. Rodney Fort, 2003, p. 446), states a Rottenberg invariance principle for college athletics: “The distribution of talent in a college sport is invariant with respect to who gets the revenue.” References Berri, David J., Schmidt, Martin B., & Brook, Stacey L. (2006). The Wages of Wins: Taking measure of the many myths in modern sport. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Fort, R. D. (2003). Sports economics. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Educational Publishing. Hodgson, G. M. (2006). What are institutions? Journal of Economic Issues, 35(1), 1–25. Leeds, M., & von Allmen, P. (2005). The economics of sports (2nd ed.). Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.. National Collegiate Athletics Association. (2005). 2005–2006 NCAA division I manual. Indianapolis: NCAA Publications. Veblen, T. (1898). The theory of the leisure class. New York: Macmillian. Zimbalist, Andrew S. (1999). Unpaid Professionals: Commercialization and conflict in big-time college sports. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.