Division I Intercollegiate Athletics Success and the Financial Impact on Universities

Private monetary contributions and the role of athletics are topicsof discussion at nearly all institutions, and thus any relationship between the two hasbecome increasingly valuable to determine donor motivations. This quantitative researchstudy analyzed universities’ overall private contributions to determine whether therewas a significant difference in the percentage of overall financial support to theinstitutions following a year of athletics success. For this study, athletics successincluded participation in either the Division I (DI) men’s basketball NationalCollegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Final Four or DI Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS)Bowl Championship Series (BCS) Bowl Game. The study focused on a period of 10 years(2002-2011) using a sample of 129 observations (Council for Aid to Education’s [CAE]Voluntary Support of Education [VSE] Survey)—satisfying the criteria above, thencomparing them with the baseline (all institutions) during the same period of time todetermine whether the change in the percentage of overall contribution was statisticallysignificant over a 2-year period. The results show a significant statistical differenceof more than double in the percent increase of overall private contributions forinstitutions with athletics success compared with all higher education institutions.Furthermore, a small statistical difference was found for the athletics success inprivate institutions compared with public institutions that experienced similarathletics success. No difference was found by region, for history of athletics success,or between basketball or football athletics success for those institutions experiencingathletics success. The study concluded that there are significant implications foroverall private financial support for institutions that experience athletics success,especially those with a private affiliation