Fri 16 Apr 2004
There are a couple of plausible arguments for large investments in sports at large universities:
1) Alumni donations;
2) Free advertising.
[Note: People sometimes offer the argument that sports pay for themselves, but athletic departments generate revenue in very few universities.]
Do these arguments apply to NESCAC type schools? To get a quick read on this question, I created a small dataset. The observations are NESCAC member schools plus Swarthmore, Carleton, and Pomona (the broader peers of Williams). I coded the 2000 endowment for each school, the number of hits I got in Google when I typed the school name, the US News & World Report 2004 Ranking, and the average Sears Cup performance over the past four years. [Note: Tufts is listed by US News as a University, so the ranking is not meaningful.] You can see the dataset by clicking the link here.
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In answer to the endowment question, there does not appear to be any systematic relationship between Sears Cup performance and endowment size. So, it is unlikely that Alumni give money to Williams based on the performance of sports teams.
However, one does find evidence that the US News Ranking and Endowment are correlated. I take this to mean that schools with large endowments can hire the quantity of faculty and build the lush campuses that do well in the ever changing US News formula. That is, large endowments cause high rankings. However, one shouldn’t be so quick to discount the converse. I bet alumni would rather see #1 in US News than a #1 in the Sears Cup despite the fact that the latter is an objective and the former is a subjective measure.
Well, what about advertising? Here the story is mixed. The best advertising for a liberal arts college is the US News ranking, but there is no relationship between the ranking and Sears Cup performance (which isn’t surprising since we already know the formula US News uses does not count sports victories). However, there does appear to be a little evidence that sports does serve as advertising when looking at the Google Hits. Williams and Amherst receive more hits than Swarthmore, Pomona, and Carleton who are comparably ranked schools. History and tradition play a role, but sports might be in the mix as well. Middlebury offers slight confirmation for this argument.
However, the two NESCAC schools with the largest number of Google hits are Tufts and Wesleyan. Both schools are Universities with graduate programs. Perhaps adding academic programs is a better way for a small college to generate press than winning the Sears Cup. Winning an obscure award may not generate the amount of press that a good graduate program can (which publishes papers, receives grants, holds symposiums, etc.). Of course, it could be that a graduate program simply generates web pages or fails to advertise to high school students.
I wouldn’t put any stock in a dataset of 14 schools, but the quick glance suggests that Division III schools do not gain much revenue or advertising from top flight sports teams.
The data does offer evidence that tips really do matter. When I visiting Hamilton a couple of times during college, it struck me as more of a jock school than Williams. The athletes weren’t better, but a higher percentage of men I encountered seemed to play high school sports (could be the parties I went to, so take the observation with a grain of salt). So Hamilton’s sports teams might approximate what Williams would look like without tips, or, at least slashing the number of tips. Hamilton has averaged 52nd place the last four years in the Sears Cup standings. Bowdoin and Bates aren’t much better. Losing the tips means having much worse sports teams. An obvious point, but worth mentioning.
April 16th, 2004 at 9:47 am
Speak of the devil, an anecdotal comment that has no bearing on your more systematic analysis: Williams and Amherst both got mentions in this week’s Sports Illustrated for athletic reasons, in the Massachusetts sports survey. Williams was noted for winning 7 of 8 Sears Cups, and Amherst for its rivalry with Williams (so, technically that’s two comments for Williams). Sports Illustrated seems to have a love for Williams — perhaps it’s the Tim Layden connection. But there was a big article about the success overall of Williams athletics a few years back, an article on the basketball team around a decade ago, several mentions of the Williams-Amherst rivalry over the years, and a slew of faces in the crowd from Williams; no other Div III school is close I’m sure. Although this publicity is nice, anyone not affiliated with Williams most likely barely, if at all, notices — for example I couldn’t tell you one occasion that Mississippi State was featured in SI, or any media for that matter, though I’m sure it gets a lot more press than the Ephs. Still, nice to be recognized.
I think the possitve press may help in one tangible regard: attracting more and better athletes to Williams. I would think, for example, than all things being equal, 7 or 8 out of ten mutual hoops recruits would choose Williams over Amherst, considering one but not the other was written up by Dickie V, the New York Times, CNNSI, etc. So the athletic success may, at this point, be a self-perpetuating cycle to some extent.