Donations: Are They Affected by a Football Championship?

The value of collegiate athletics, within higher education, is frequently debated, and has spawned numerous research projects. These studies have systematically neglected nondivision1-A teams and football championships. This study was designed to fill that void and analyze the impact of a NCAA football championship on donations to the university and to the athletic department. A questionnaire was developed to discover the athletic department donations and donations to the university data were obtained from the Council for Aid to Education's annual publication. Collected data were subjected to descriptive statistics and multivariate analyses. Results revealed that there was a positive impact in donations to DII and DIII athletic departments and an increase in the number of donors to all athletic departments. Results also revealed that DIII universities had a significant increase in university donations and that DI-AA enjoyed an increase in the number of donors to the university.