Date of Award
2022
Document Type
Honors Thesis (Open Access)
Department
Colby College. Economics Dept.
Advisor(s)
Robert Lester
Abstract
Several major sports organizations have come under scrutiny in recent years for alleged discriminatory practices towards minority coaches. In this paper, I analyze whether minority college football head coaches are more likely to be fired and to earn a lower salary. I observe a sample of 300 head coaches from 132 Division-I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) schools between the years 2006 to 2021. After controlling for performance and experience variables and holding the time and school or conference variables fixed in a Cox hazard regression model, I find statistically significant evidence that minority coaches face a higher likelihood of being terminated than their white counterparts. Second, by running an ordinary least squares regression, I find no statistically significant evidence that minority coaches are more likely to earn a lower wage than white coaches. These findings highlight the fact that minority coaches face higher levels of scrutiny, and open the door for potential further research to be done on the hiring processes of these programs as well.
Keywords
NCAA football, discrimination, hazard models, wages, retention, head coaches, conferences, race, pandemic, bowl games
Recommended Citation
Fukuda, Yusuke, "Discrimination Among College Football Head Coaches" (2022). Honors Theses. Paper 1351.https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/honorstheses/1351