Competitive Balance and Conference Realignment in the NCAA: The Case of the Western Athletic and Mountain West Conferences

Competitive imbalance in football within a college athletic conference can lead to churning—either top teams or bottom teams in a conference leave the conference. But an implied assumption in this story is that competitive imbalance in college football alone leads to churning, regardless of what is occurring with other sports teams—such as men’s basketball—fielded by universities in the same athletic conference. This paper expands the scope of the existing models in the literature by relaxing that assumption and including the impact of competitive imbalance issues across sports within athletic conferences. By examining the case of the Western Athletic and Mountain West Conference, we observe that while churning in this conference has lead to more balance in football over time, it has had no impact on competitive balance in basketball. This suggests that drawing potential disparities in football lead the churning that has occurred. Granger causality tests confirm this result. Because policies to affect competitive balance do not seem to best be implemented at the national level by the NCAA, more future modifications to try to enhance competitive balance can be expected at the conference level. A more complete understanding of the economics of college athletic conferences is essential in that endeavor. * This is a preliminary draft prepared for the 2004 Southern Economic Association Annual meeting, New Orleans, LA. Comments are welcome. 1