The Estimated Rents of a Top-Flight Men's College Hockey Player

Abstract

We employed a methodology similar to Brown (1993, 1994) to estimate the marginal revenue generated by a top-flight NCAA Division I college hockey player. We added to the extant literature in two ways. First, the previous research focused on college basketball and football players. This is the first attempt to consider the case of college hockey players. Second, previous research has been conducted using relatively small, cross-sections of data. We employed a larger, panel dataset. Empirical results showed that top-flight college hockey players generate between $131,000 and $165,000 in added revenues to schools. According to the NCAA, the average value of an athletic scholarship is between $14,000 for in-state public schools to $32,000 in private schools in 2008. This implied that a premium college hockey player generates rents in excess of $100,000 per year for the typical institution.