Competitive Recruiting Imbalances Between National Collegiate Athletic Association Conferences

Abstract

The National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) is divided into ten conferences. In the last few years there have been significant conference realignments as many schools have changed conferences. Using a novel panel dataset of high school football player recruitment from 2014 to 2023 at 120 different FBS university programs, we analyze the distribution of recruitment athletic talent across teams and conferences. While most larger universities in “Power Five” conferences recruit a similar number of five, four, and three-star recruits, we find that universities in the Southeastern Conference enjoy greater recruitment success, even after controlling for athletic program success at the university-level. In comparison, we find that smaller universities in “Group of Five” conferences are all at a disadvantage, recruiting fewer highly rated players. Our analysis suggests that conference affiliation is one of the major drivers of talent recruitment. Such recruitment imbalances yield broader implications because football team performance has been found to be associated with broader university success in terms of the quality and quantity of student applications, admissions, and endowment.