Do Colleges Get What They Pay For? Evidence on Football Coach Pay and Team Performance

Gary J. Colbert and Edwin Eckard

Journal of Sports Economics, 2015, vol. 16, issue 4, 335-352

Abstract: We use a data set of Football Bowl Subdivision (Division-IA) universities to investigate the hypothesis that higher coach pay leads to improved team performance. Our analysis finds that pay and team performance are positively correlated and that, when schools change coaches, higher pay is associated with improved performance. The evidence suggests that additional rating points are increasingly valuable, perhaps over US$1 million for top teams. Our descriptive analysis reveals the median 2011 head coach pay of US$1.2 million, significant increases over our 2006-2011 study period, and large disparities among schools and conferences. We conclude that administrators perceive highly ranked football teams have significant value.

Keywords: college football; coach pay; team performance; hiring decisions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1527002513501679 (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:16:y:2015:i:4:p:335-352

DOI: 10.1177/1527002513501679

Access Statistics for this article

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