College football programs devote an enormous amount of resources in efforts to persuade high school football players to attend their schools. In this study, we develop an empirical model of the factors that recruits consider when selecting a school, using a database that combines school-specific attributes with recruit-specific information. The authors' estimates imply that recruits' decisions are governed by a handful of primary factors such as the geographic distance between the recruit and the college, the school's recent football rankings, and whether the school is a member of one of the six Bowl Championship Series (BCS) conferences.
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