Filtering by
- All Subjects: College Athletics
- Creators: Eaton, John
Specifically, this paper focuses on the Arizona State University Sun Devils football team’s year-over-year results from 2006-2016 and uses this dataset as a comparison against multiple academic and financial measures from the university. This paper also attempts to define what a university's “brand” is and discuss the effect that these teams have on a student’s experience at the university. Based on these findings and results, we attempt to draw conclusions surrounding this information on if there are certain correlations between football success and university indicators and how strongly these indicators affect the university and its brand.
Throughout my paper, I will discuss a few individuals from two different marketing industries, print and digital media, who chose to market themselves as ‘bossy’; people who gained momentum from a stand still by asserting themselves into seemingly untouchable opportunities, including RJ Orr, VP of Sales at bluemedia inc, and Jeff Herzog, Founder and CEO of ZOG Digital Media and Founder and former CEO of iCrossing. Through my study of these individuals, I will identify several leadership
qualities that have aided them in their journeys to success, and then discuss the ways I have started to incorporate the characteristics into my own life as I begin my own career path.I will demonstrate that momentum in the marketing world is gained not by being in the right place at the right time, instead, it is ga ined by ensuring you are in the right place, and by making it the right time. Effective leaders in marketing must forge new opportunities for themselves while committing to the things that they are passionate about. They must remain teachable and steer clear of being a prisoner of their own experiences through comfort with status quo. Service and initiative are critical keys to upward mobility, and leaders must harness the ability to connect with the people they
work with and understand that sometimes their “right way” might not be the only right way. In order to reach the optimum level of innovation, the company will always need to be reaching forward, moving its feet, and racing towards success through creating opportunities from places that seem inopportune.
The NCAA’s legalization of athletes to profit off of their own name, image, and likeness (NIL) was met with mixed response from fans of collegiate sports. A popular talking point among people against NIL was that its legalization would cause talented athletes to “follow the money” and increase the recruiting quality at schools where NIL opportunities were plentiful. In essence, a theoretical “talent gap” would form due to this movement of athlete talent. The goal of this paper is to determine the talent gap’s existence or lack thereof while also setting stakeholders directly involved with NIL deals (colleges, businesses, companies) up for success in the age of NIL. This was executed first through the issuance of a survey that collected five categories of data: fandom and interest in college sports, industry sector interest, NIL preferences (structure, money, form), NIL recruiting preferences, and demographics. Following this collection of survey data, recruiting and transfer data for the years 2011-2023 was obtained and analyzed to determine the influence of specific variables in the recruiting process. The survey used in this paper was sent out to over 300 Arizona State University students from Dr. Eaton’s fall semester marketing class, with 158 participants filtered out in order to exclusively measure the responses of students with a similar perspective to athletes. The recruiting and transfer data was derived from the recruiting websites 247 Sports, Rivals, and On3 sports, with On3 Sports additionally providing NIL valuation estimates. Findings from the survey and recruiting data analysis could neither prove or disprove the existence of the theorized athletic talent gap. Results suggest that football or basketball program prestige is the true primary driver of talent movement, not NIL. Businesses looking to issue NIL deals should focus on the marketing obligations and payment structure of the deal rather than payment value, as money does not significantly influence the decision to take an NIL deal offer.
This paper analyzes different issues within collegiate athletics. Further, it provides a roadmap for how leaders in collegiate athletics can better make decisions involving conference membership and media rights decisions that directly serve the interests of student-athletes, the athletic department, and the entire university community. Relevant literature is addressed in the literature review section regarding the financial components of college athletics and how conference realignment impacts different financial elements of the athletic department and university. Also, the literature review section focuses on how conference realignment decisions impact rivalries. The last part of the literature review focuses on a more contemporary analysis involving conference realignment and how changing some of the financial structures within college athletics would result in a more equitable and fair landscape regarding gender equity. Using data from the Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database, financial data related to Texas A&M University, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and the University of Maryland-College Park were analyzed to determine how these three institutions were affected by their decisions to change conferences within the Power V. Each of these institutions athletic departments finances, including specific revenue and expense categories, were affected differently by their decision to change conferences, but this data can serve as an important indicator for how universities that are currently choosing to change conferences will be affected. Then the next portion of this paper involved primary data collection, where the sample consisted of Arizona State University Introduction to Marketing students. This survey focused on measuring the opinions of college sports fans regarding various issues and topics related to college athletics, including the role of college athletics within the university, conference realignment, the importance of rivalries, and media rights. Lastly, this paper includes an analysis and comparison of survey data from the University of California Office of the President, where UCLA student-athletes comprised the survey population. This survey focused on UCLA student-athletes’ opinions regarding UCLA’s decision to join the Big Ten conference.