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New Study by Jasmine Bordere and Frank Mixon Investigates Link between Overall Athletic Success and the Quality of Universities’ Incoming Freshmen

A number of academic studies published over the past 35 years have shown that athletic success (as a measure of the quality of campus life) boosts the quantity and quality of admissions applications, freshman retention rates, graduation rates, tuition revenues, institutions’ rankings and philanthropic giving across the higher education landscape in the U.S. Most of these studies have, however, focused on a single sport like football or basketball, and not the entire menu of sports activities supported by higher education institutions. For example, in late June of 2025, the University of Texas’ (UT) Department of Athletics was awarded the Learfield Directors’ Cup by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics in recognition of its superior performance during the 2024-25 academic year. During that time, the UT men’s and women’s sports teams amassed 1,255.25 Learfield Directors’ Cup points, many of which were earned from capturing two national championships – men’s swimming and diving and softball – and five third-place finishes – football, women’s basketball, women’s swimming and diving, women’s rowing and men’s tennis. A new study by the Turner College's Jasmine Bordere and Frank Mixon, along with Syracuse University's Shane Sanders, fills this void in the economics literature by investigating the link between overall athletic success at the institution level and various indicators of the quality of institutions’ incoming freshmen. More specifically, the study explores the association between institutions’ Learfield Cup performances and the SAT scores, ACT scores and high school GPAs of their incoming freshman classes. Econometric results presented in this study suggest that marginal improvements in an institution’s overall athletic performance across all men’s and women’s sports are associated with freshmen SAT and ACT scores that are, on average, upwards of 21 and 0.53 points higher, respectively, as well as with a high school grade point average across the incoming freshman class that is about 0.1 points higher.
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