FiT Publishing

Top management pay and firm size has been well documented. We explore a variation of this relationship by extending it to college sports. College football is big business, and many college football programs operate as large corporations with the head coach acting as a member of top management—similar to the COO—of the football program. Using data from 2006-2012, we examine the causal relationship between a head coach’s school pay, past performance, and football program size. Our results indicate the most important determinant of a head coach’s pay is the total revenue generated by the...Read more

Though not glamorous, working for a minor league sports team could be one of the most fun and challenging areas of the sports industry. Due to small staff sizes and limited budgets, employees will be called upon to perform several different tasks that demand a wide range of knowledge and skills. This case study comes directly from the experience of the lead author, who, in four years of working in both baseball and hockey, felt as if he did everything but play, and ended up as the president of the Nashville Ice Flyers of the Central Hockey League during the 1997-98 season.Read more

On and around college campuses, many businesses display posters and banners, paint their storefronts with school mascots, and prominently use school team colors in promotional efforts. While many of these businesses are sponsors or members of school sanctioned booster organizations, some are not. Businesses that are not paying to be affiliated with the school, yet engage in such activities, seemingly fall within the definition of ambush marketing. We have labeled this distinct type of ambush marketing as “freeloading,” as companies realize benefits without paying for them, yet are not...Read more

This study explores the effects of expectations and industry standards on customer satisfaction in the student ticketing process in intercollegiate athletics. Data were collected from 378 students attending three NCAA Division I institutions, and an experimental design was used to determine which type of expectations best predicted customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction and how information about industry standards affected satisfaction levels. Findings suggest sport customers make satisfaction judgments based on what they think should be in a policy rather than what they think will be in a...Read more

This study examined a collegiate community¡¯s identification with the university¡¯s athletics program and evaluated fan consumer behavior indices and underlying motives for following the program. The study focused on the entire athletics program and surveyed a broad cross-section of the community within the context of initiatives from the newly elected President to raise the university¡¯s profile and the emergence of two teams as top 25 nationally. Participants included 258 individuals (120 females, 134 males, and 4 unspecified) and represented undergraduate students, graduate students,...Read more

This study investigated the effects of college students' attitudes toward commercialization and their psychological attachment to an intercollegiate athletic program on their purchasing intentions of sponsors' products. The relationships between attitudes toward commercialization and psychological attachment were also examined. Data were collected from college students (N = 124) of a large Midwest University. A series of hierarchical regression analysis revealed that attitudes toward commercialization and psychological attachment together explained 28 percent of the variance in purchasing...Read more

The purpose of the current paper is to help improve our understanding of why people donate money to athletic support groups, which motivations are most prevalent among donors, and how motivations differ across three schools. Four thousand one hundred and thirty-seven responses (from 1,579 athletic support group donors at three universities) to an open-ended question about donor motivation were content analyzed. Results suggest that primary motives include supporting and improving the athletic program, receiving tickets, helping student-athletes, deriving entertainment and enjoyment,...Read more

During the 2001 college football season more than 40 million individuals attended intercollegiate football games across the four divisions sponsored by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Although it would be easy to classify all of these individuals as either being spectators or fans, that would be inaccurate. Trail, Robinson, Gillentine, and Dick (2003) developed a model based on the relationship between motives and points of attachment that classified attendees as either spectators or fans. The purpose of this study was to use the model to determine how individuals who...Read more

The purpose of the current paper is to help improve our understanding of why people donate money to athletic support groups, which motivations are most prevalent among donors, and how motivations differ across three schools. Four thousand one hundred and thirty-seven responses (from 1,579 athletic support group donors at three universities) to an open-ended question about donor motivation were content analyzed. Results suggest that primary motives include supporting and improving the athletic program, receiving tickets, helping student-athletes, deriving entertainment and enjoyment,...Read more

In NCAA Division I from 1997 to 2001, sponsorship revenue increased from $766,000 to $1.38 million per institution, an increase of 79%. Growth primarily occurred in Division I-A at a rate of 91%, while Divisions I-AA and I-AAA grew by 8.3% and 34.0%, respectively. During this period, no division experienced growth rates comparable to the accelerated rate that occurred in the entire sport industry (IEG Sponsorship.com, 2003).Read more