Win or Go Home: Why College Football Coaches Get Fired

Paul Holmes

Journal of Sports Economics, 2011, vol. 12, issue 2, 157-178

Abstract: Models of dismissals of sports executives frequently ignore the development of expectations regarding performance. The author explores the interplay between these expectations and the coach’s tenure by examining dismissals of college football head coaches from 1983 to 2006. Using a discrete-time hazard model, the author demonstrates that schools use prior performance in two ways: to evaluate the ability of the coach and to establish performance standards for retention. As recent performance is more relevant for estimating ability, the author shows that stronger recent performances decrease the chance of dismissal but stronger historic performances increase the chance of dismissal. Results describe a continual learning process on the part of schools. The author also considers the effects of race, insider-ness, rivalries, and rules violations on retention.

Keywords: college football; coaches; dismissals; expectation formation; discrete-time hazard (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1527002510378820 (text/html)

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:sae:jospec:v:12:y:2011:i:2:p:157-178

DOI: 10.1177/1527002510378820

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Sports Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().