The Effect of College Football Bowl Game Participation on Student-Athlete Academic Outcomes and Team Athletic Success

This study presents the results of a regression discontinuity empirical approach to investigate the effects of postseason bowl game participation on student-athlete academic outcomes and subsequent football team success. The practice expectations for student-athletes on football teams that participate in a bowl game increase by between two and four weeks relative to student-athletes on teams that do not participate in a bowl game. Prior research has been inconclusive on whether this increased practice intensity is associated with academic or athletic outcomes. The sample includes 130 NCAA football bowl subdivision (FBS) teams between the years 2003 through 2018. We apply a fuzzy regression discontinuity design by exploiting the fact that teams in the NCAA FBS become eligible to participate in a bowl game when their regular season winning percentage is greater than 0.50. The results suggest that bowl game participation increased the team's eligibility rate by 0.8 percentage points, the team's Academic Progress Rate by 4.6 points, but had no effect on the team's retention rate. Bowl game participation was not found to affect the subsequent year's winning percentage or likelihood of bowl game participation. Athletic programs that are undecided about whether the costs, in finances or time, of participating in a bowl game are worthwhile might benefit from these findings. In particular, the results reveal that bowl game participation does not come as a detriment to the academic outcomes of their student-athletes.