David S. Martin
Kyle M. Townsend
Yun Wang
and Gopikrishna Deshpande

This research examines a phenomenon the authors have entitled “directional-contamination,” which is a consumer’s response to advertising branded with a rival team after advertising branded with the home team has been shown. Utilizing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the authors exposed two groups of respondents, seven who identify as fans of a specific football team and eight who are not fans to marketing and promotional material that corporate sponsors currently use in their branding efforts. The authors compared the neural responses of the participants (n=15) to three...Read more

Terence Eddy
Daniel Rascher
and Rebecca Stewart

College football is considered by many to be an important aspect of campus life, which also promotes a connection with alumni and other supporters (Toma, 2003). The overall interest in NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) football remains high, as 35.3 million fans attended regular-season games during the 2012 season (though it should be noted that this represents a 3% drop from the all-time high in 2008) (Solomon, 2012). However, these figures can be deceiving when considering that the range of spectator interest in FBS football is extremely wide. For example, four teams (...Read more

Craig A. Depken II
Courtney Williams
Dennis P. Wilson

This paper provides an empirical analysis of attendance to Division I women’s collegiate basketball programs from 2000-2009. The evidence suggests that women’s basketball attendance is sensitive to many of the same variables known to influence attendance to men’s collegiate basketball, including current and recent team quality, recent post-season success, and school characteristics. We further investigate whether college football is a complement, a substitute, or an independent of women’s basketball on campus. Investigating complementarity is of practical importance as schools continue to...Read more

Khalid Ballouli
Gregg Bennett

On the red-eye flight from Ann Arbor to Houston, Noelle found she was the only passenger not sleeping soundly. The electric buzz from the previous day’s studio recording was still rippling through her body. Noelle had spent weeks in Ann Arbor consulting with the University of Michigan regarding a music strategy to help market Wolverine athletics. Last night, she witnessed the culmination of her project, as Michigan rock band Pop Evil recorded a final version of their song titled “Big House,” a tribute to the famed Michigan Stadium. In the studio, Noelle and her colleagues glossed over...Read more