Competitive balance and conference realignment: the case of big 12 football

Sport Journal, The, Spring, 2007 by Martin M. Perline, G. Clayton Stoldt

Abstract:

Past research has indicated that an effort to achieve greater competitive balance has been one factor in conference realignments within college athletics. The purpose of this study was to determine if greater levels of competitive balance in football were realized after the Big 8 conference merged with four members of the Southwest Conference. Specifically, comparisons were made between competitive balance levels for the last ten years of the Big 8 with the first ten years of the Big 12. Three measures of competitive balance were employed; in general, the findings indicated that competitive balance in football has improved in the ten years after the merger.

Introduction:

In the area of competitive sports, it is mandatory that the outcome of any game or match contain some degree of uncertainty. If this was not the case, it is believed fans would lose interest (Depken & Wilson, 2006; El Hodiri & Quirk, 1971; Kesenne, 2006; Quirk & Fort, 1992; Sanderson & Siegfried, 2003) and thus there would be significantly lower revenues for the organizations involved, particularly media revenue. Stated somewhat differently, it is of vital importance that for any sports league or conference, there needs to be some degree of competitive balance among the various teams.

Competitive imbalance is often linked to disparate revenues among competing organizations (Kaplan, 2004; Sanderson, 2002). At the professional level, these disparities are commonly linked to variables such as the size of a particular team's media market or home facility. Organizations serving larger markets and/or having newer facilities may be able to generate more revenue than competitors, and thus secure the most talented teams. Likewise, at the collegiate level institutions may enjoy competitive advantages as a result of revenues generated from larger fan bases and better facilities. While those monies may not be passed to student-athletes in the form of salaries, high-revenue programs arguably enjoy significant recruiting advantages because they can invest in new or improved facilities and other program enhancements.

At the professional level, a variety of tactics are commonly employed to enhance competitive balance (Sanderson & Siegfried, 2003). They include salary caps, luxury taxes, revenue sharing, and draft orders favoring those teams that enjoyed the least success the previous season. At the college level, measures such as scholarship limits and prohibitions against extra benefits for student-athletes have attempted to promote competitive balance (Rhoads, 2004). These regulations are commonly enforced by a national governing body (e.g., NCAA, NAIA). However, college athletic conferences also play roles in promoting competitive balance. In particular, Rhoads (2004) has argued the conference realignments are at least partially driven by competitive disparity among institutions. Because of the large gate and television revenues that are often at stake, particularly in football and men's basketball, efforts to maintain a certain degree of competitive balance in these sports would serve as an incentive to bring about churning within, and mergers between, conferences (Rhoads, 2004).

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to measure the change in competitive balance as a conference changes its membership. Does this bring about the desired increase in competitive balance? In order to shed light on this question, we surveyed the changes in competitive balance as the Big 8 Conference merged with four members of the Southwest Conference to become the Big 12.

Since previous research has suggested no increase in competitive balance in men's basketball as conferences have gone through change (Rhoads, 2004; Perline & Stoldt, in press), we have chosen to test the hypothesis that attempts to increase competitive balance in football are major reasons for conference realignment (Rhoads, 2004; Fort & Quirk, 1999; Quirk, 2004). More specifically, we compared levels of competitive balance in football in the ten years before the merger with the ten years after. Although the Big 12 separated football into two divisions, we chose to use the overall conference standings for our analysis. This seemed most appropriate, since the Big 8 was not so divided, and teams in each division of the Big 12 played three of their eight conference games with teams in the opposite division.

The Big 12 Conference

The Big 12 is a NCAA Division I-A level conference founded in 1995 (Big 12, 2006). Its membership includes Baylor University, the University of Colorado, Iowa State University, the University of Kansas, Kansas State University, the University of Missouri, the University of Nebraska, the University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State University, the University of Texas, Texas A&M University, and Texas Tech University.

Each institution in the conference was formerly a member of either the now-defunct Big 8 or Southwest conferences. Changing dynamics in the collegiate athletics marketplace, such as other conferences churning members and new agreements for television coverage, provided an impetus for the formation of the Big 12 (Michaelis, 1996; Thompson, 2000). The new conference included each member of the Big 8 and four institutions from the Southwest Conference. Texas and Texas A&M were, arguably, the flagship programs in the Southwest Conference, so their selection was not surprising. The decision to include Baylor and Texas Tech was more controversial because those institutions were from smaller markets than the four other members of the Southwest Conference that were not selected. However, both institutions had alumni in key offices within the Texas state government at the time of the merger, and the political influence of those state officials impacted Baylor's and Texas Tech's selection (Thompson, 2000; Waldman, 1995). The resultant geographic market of the new conference includes 42 million people and 18 million households with television--roughly 16% of the nation's total (Big 12, 2006; Michaelis, 1996; Thompson, 2000; Waldman, 1995).