The BCS, Antitrust and Public Policy

Andrew Zimbalist ()
Additional contact information
Andrew Zimbalist: Department of Economics, Smith College

No 2009-01, Working Papers from Smith College, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper examines the history and the economics of the Bowl Championship Series, in the context of all college bowl games. The evidence suggests that the BCS restricts entry to the FBS conferences that are outside the BCS cartel and that the revenue distribution from the bowl games is highly skewed in favor of the six BCS conferences. The resulting revenue advantage enables the BCS conferences to perpetuate their historical predominance. The BCS selection process is based on a conceptually confused and biased system. The paper discusses the rationale proffered by the BCS for its system and then considers the antitrust arguments against the BCS. It concludes that the outcome of any antitrust claim would be uncertain, which together with the involved expense and time render problematic any antitrust strategy to break up the BCS cartel. Instead, the paper concludes with a call for a legislative solution that would open up the national championship to all FBS conferences, increase output, redistribute revenues more evenly throughout Division I and the rest of the NCAA, and provide more opportunities to college athletes.

JEL-codes: K21 L11 L12 L44 L83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-his, nep-ind and nep-law
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.smith.edu/econ/workingpaper/pdfs/Zimbalist1.pdf First version, 2009 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.smith.edu/econ/workingpaper/pdfs/Zimbalist1.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.smith.edu/econ/workingpaper/pdfs/Zimbalist1.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:smt:wpaper:2009-01

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Smith College, Department of Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Elizabeth Savoca ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).