The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) governs athletics at colleges and universities in the United States. Economists commonly view the NCAA as a cartel. We empirically reexamine evidence from the 1984 Supreme Court decision on football telecasts and find support for cartel behavior and evidence that this model does not fully explain. Our analysis indicates that the NCAA central organization may have behaved opportunistically by overregulating relative to what would maximize cartel net benefits. We provide a theoretical rationale and show that our empirical estimates are consistent with this behavior that occurs within the cartel framework.
BennettR. W.FizelJ. L., (1995). Telecast deregulation and competitive balance: Regarding NCAA division I football. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 54, 183–199.
BrownR. W. (1994). Incentives and revenue sharing in college football: Spreading the wealth or giving away the game?Managerial and Decision Economics, 15, 471–486.
4.
BuriamoB.SimmonsR.MaciaszcyzkM. (2012). Favoritism and referee bias in European soccer: Evidence from the Spanish League and UEFA Champions League. Contemporary Economic Policy, 30, 329–343.
5.
CarrollK. (1991). Effect of alternative television rights on the NCAA as a Cartel. Atlantic Economic Journal Best Papers Proceedings, 1, 117–121.
6.
CarrollK.HumphreysB. R. (2000). Nonprofit decision making and social regulation: The intended and unintended consequences of title IX. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 43, 359–376.
7.
CaveM.CrandallR. W. (2002). Sports rights and the broadcast industry. The Economic Journal, 111, 4–26.
8.
DeBrockL.HendricksW. (1996). Roll call voting in the NCAA. Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, 12, 497–517.
9.
DepkenC. A.WilsonW. (2006). NCAA enforcement and competitive balance in college football. Southern Economic Journal, 72, 826–845.
10.
EckardE. W. (1998). The NCAA cartel and competitive balance in college football. Review of Industrial Organization, 13, 347–369.
11.
FizelJ. L.BennettR. W. (1989). The impact of college football telecasts on college football attendance. Social Science Quarterly, 79, 980–988.
12.
FleisherA. A.GoffB. L.TollisonR. D. (1992). The national collegiate athletic association: A study in cartel behavior. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
13.
ForrestD.SimmonsR.SzymanskiS. (2004). Broadcasting, attendance and the inefficiency of cartels. Review of Industrial Organization, 24, 243–265.
14.
FurubotnE. G.RichterR. (2005). Institutions and economic theory: The contribution of the new institutional economics (2nd ed.). Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.
15.
GreenspanD. (1988). College football’s biggest fumble: The economic impact of the supreme court’s decision in national collegiate athletic Association v. Board of regents of the university of Oklahoma. The Antitrust Bulletin, 23, 1–65.
16.
HarbaughR.KlumppT. (2005). Early round upsets and championship blowouts. Economic Inquiry, 43, 316–329.
17.
HumphreysB. R. (2002). Alternative measures of competitive balance in sports leagues. Journal of Sports Economics, 3, 133–148.
18.
HumphreysB. R.RuseskiJ. E. (2009). Monitoring cartel behavior and stability: Evidence From NCAA football. Southern Economic Journal, 75, 720–735.
19.
JamesE.Rose-AckermanS. (1986). The nonprofit enterprise in market economics. New York, NY: Harwood Academic Publishers.
KochJ.V. (1986). The intercollegiate athletics industry. In AdamsW. (Ed.), The structure of American industry (7th ed.). New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Company.
25.
LawrenceP. R. (1987). Unsportsmanlike conduct. New York, NY: Praeger Publishers.
26.
MackeyC. (1995). College sports. In AdamsW.BrockJ. (Eds.), The structure of American industry (9th ed., pp. 271–297). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
27.
MawsonL. M.BowlerW. T.III. (1989). Effects of the 1984 supreme court ruling on the television revenues of NCAA Division I football programs. Journal of Sport Management, 3, 79–89.
28.
National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Board of Regents of University of Oklahoma, 485 U.S. 85 (1984).
29.
PaceyP. L. (1985). The courts and college football: New playing rules off the field?American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 44, 145–154.
30.
RickmanN.WittR. (2008). Favouritism and financial incentives: A natural experiment. Economica, 75, 296–305.
31.
SutterD.WinklerS. (2003). NCAA scholarship limits and competitive balance in college football. Journal of Sports Economics, 4, 3–18.
32.
WilliamsonO. E. (1993). Opportunism and its critics. Managerial and Decision Economics, 14, 97–107.
33.
ZimbalistA. (1999). Unpaid professionals: Commercialism and conflict in big-time college sports. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
