The unofficial online home for fans of the Old Dominion University Monarchs. Part of Collegiate Sports Nation (CSN).

Found a handful of articles going both ways. No white papers or anything though, at least nothing that is free.
So, I figured I'd look at the numbers for ODU, VT, and Alabama.



Arrows show Alabama's FBS championships. Doesn't appear to be a direct relationship with winning and applications/acceptance.

ODU and VT are pretty much the same, or close enough to be the same




Winning games doesn't appear to have a direct tie to SAT scores either with Alabama being more dominant in athletics than VT yet, VT has the higher SAT scores.



So I'm still not convinced.
I will concede that Athletic success, typically FB and BB do trigger Alumni to express their pride in the form of donations.
However that doesn't explain why a schools such as Harvey Mudd, MIT, Washington Lee, Rose Hulman and many more, schools who have no or a very small athletic budget when you consider everything else put out graduates that are in higher demand than your average Alabama or ODU grad.

If I can find a real paper with actual data that agrees with you then I will change my mind and admit I was wrong.

But if you guys are correct then I guess by that very same token, sports can also lessen the value of your degree if your team gets caught up in something. I.E. Miami.

Which is foolish to me, because that doesn't effect the rest of the student body. Yet Graduates get caught up in it regardless.