Stratification and Mobility in Big-Time College Football

Abstract

White's (1970) vacancy chain model of stratification and mobility in a social system was applied to American big-time college football teams during the postwar period. Two specific vacancy chain models were generated, the binomial and the more general models. Both models were found to describe the empirical results well. The vacancy chain model appeared to show potential for developing broader understandings of the generic processes of stratification and mobility. Substantively, the empirical results demonstrate the extreme stratification and slow mobility that characterize the big-time college football system, and underline the difficulties outsiders face when they try to become members of the football elite.