Touchdowns and test scores: exploring the relationship between athletics and academics

This article examines the relationship between college football success and SAT scores using an updated data series on football winning percentages. The finding here of a positive and significant relationship supports the idea that collegiate athletics, namely football, serves the institution's admissions process. Selective institutions are able to enhance the quality of their student populations. The spinoff benefit of winning teams is such a well-known phenomenon among university administrators that they even have a name for it - 'the Flutie factor,' for the 33 percent increase in applications that Doug Flutie helped bring Boston College when he was a football star there in the early 1980s. (Allen, 1999: 2)