Predicting NCAA Division I Football Conference Winning Percentage

Applied strategies to improve conference wins for NCAA Division I FBS football teams could have implications for increased resource acquisition, bowl berths, or inclusion in the lucrative college football playoffs. Unfortunately, aggregated research is lacking that identifies how administrators might prioritize such efforts, so that they may allocate their scarce resources to the most impactful areas. Thus, the purpose of this study was to investigate variables likely to impact conference winning percentage to provide practical insight for leaders embracing their role within managerial capitalism. Pearson correlations and multilinear OLS were applied to determine which descriptive, financial, and performance variables predict conference winning percentage. Football expenditures as well as coach success, recruit quality, and power conference membership were significantly predictive. Application of these results suggest conference winning percentage would likely increase as a result of targeted financial development leading to investments in recruiting and football expenditures, particularly in the power conferences.