West Virginia University research has revealed that college football coaches’ paychecks influence the quality of the players they’re able to recruit.

“College football coach salaries at big-time programs have increased substantially in recent years,” said Brad Humphreys, professor of economics at the WVU John Chambers College of Business and Economics. “We showed one reason for the increase is that colleges can recruit better athletes when they can offer them great coaches—and great coaches command higher salaries.”

Humphreys and professor Jane Ruseski have published their results in the journal Applied Economics.

“For decades, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, or NCAA, hasn’t allowed colleges or universities to compete for student-athletes on a price basis,” Humphreys explained. “Instead, the NCAA limited athletes’ compensation to the cost of attending college and schools began competing to attract players in non-monetary ways.

“That could mean lavish practice facilities or larger stadiums, or it could mean higher-quality coaches. Our work is the first to show that this non-price-based competition for athletes happened in an industry where no such competition was thought to exist.”

The 2021 Supreme Court decision in NCAA v. Alston allowed student-athletes to begin to profit from opportunities like brand endorsements, but the NCAA still largely restricts colleges to offering players scholarships that cover tuition, room, board and other costs of higher education. Big-time NCAA football and basketball programs bring in major revenues that–since they can’t go toward player compensation–pay the salaries of coaches and administrators.

“High-quality college coaches are better at developing athletes for post-college professional careers,” Humphreys said. “They generate wins, so athletes who play for high-quality coaches get to experience more victories, more championships. We found the bigger a head coach’s salary, the higher that coach’s quality and profile, and the more successful their team’s recruitment efforts.”

Humphreys and Ruseski estimated the effect of head coach salaries on recruiting success for 90 NCAA Division I-A football schools between 2006 and 2015. They used data including player rankings from 247Sports, which measures the quality of different schools’ recruiting classes.

The average score awarded to a recruiting class by 247Sports over the 2006 to 2015 seasons was 172. The researchers discovered that for every $1 million bump in the salary of the head coach, the quality score of the incoming recruiting class jumped by an average of 77 points.

“This is consistent with the presence of an arms race in intercollegiate athletics,” Humphreys said. “In an arms race, firms race to outdo each other not through price wars, but through strategies like facilities, equipment, product quality, customer service, personnel. Now NCAA institutions are engaged in an athletics arms race in the form of escalating coaches’ salaries and multimillion-dollar investments in facilities—a rational response to NCAA regulations that limit compensation to athletes.”

The study showed the average head football coach earned $1.8 million per season, with top earner Nick Saban bringing in more than $7.4 million in 2015 at the University of Alabama. But salaries veered sharply upward over the course of the study, Humphreys emphasized.

In 2006, the average head football coach in the sample earned about 14 times more than the average full-time faculty member. By 2015, the coach earned more than 26 times the faculty member’s salary.

Humphreys said he believes that the steep rise in coach compensation can’t be adequately explained by the “rising tide” of revenues earned by college football teams.

“Our results imply the increase in head football coach salaries represents strategic interaction among athletic departments as they compete for high-quality coaches. When one school gives a head coach a raise, competing schools will follow, creating an upward spiral in salaries. There are policy implications there, given that the head football coach at a state’s flagship public university is often the state’s highest-paid public employee.”

He said, “Some advocates of reform want Congress to enable college sports to put a salary cap on head coach compensation, but that may not be necessary after the decision in NCAA v. Alston. We’ll need to see how institutions adjust to an environment where athlete compensation beyond NCAA regulations is possible.”

Following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, many companies with operations in Russia withdrew from or severely curtailed their Russian operations. For example, Dell and McDonald’s ceased all operations in Russia after the invasion.

Many experts have argued that the corporate response to the Ukraine war is a striking example of stakeholder capitalism, a model where corporations are responsible for considering the interests of various stakeholders—including employees, customers, communities, governments and the environment—and not just their shareholders. In contrast, opponents of the stakeholder view argue that firms should focus on the principal shareholders.

New research from the University of Notre Dame explores the impact of such corporate actions on consumer mindset metrics.

Decisions to withdraw from Russia since its invasion of Ukraine positively impacted consumer sentiment, especially for companies with strong environmental, social and governance (ESG) reputations, according to lead author Shankar Ganesan, the Raymond W. and Kenneth G. Herrick Collegiate Professor of Marketing at Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, along with Girish Mallapragada from Indiana University.

Ganesan’s research, “Navigating Geopolitical Turmoil: Corporate Responses to the War in Ukraine and Its Impact on Consumer Mindset,” is forthcoming in the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing.

The Ukraine conflict serves as an important backdrop for the examination of corporate sociopolitical activism, where companies take public stances on controversial social and political issues.

Recent expansion in Russia by SLB (a global technology company formerly named Schlumberger) provides a stark contrast to the companies that withdrew from Russia following the invasion of Ukraine.

“This ongoing situation directly relates to our research,” said Ganesan, who studies interorganizational relationships and customer relationship management. “While many companies that withdrew from Russia saw a boost in consumer sentiment, SLB’s actions may test the limits of corporate reputation and consumer mindset in geopolitical crises.”

“SLB’s decision to continue and even expand operations in Russia, despite being labeled an international sponsor of war by Ukraine, presents a real-world case study of the potential long-term effects on brand reputation and consumer mindset metrics that our paper explores,” he said.

“It also highlights the complex interplay between corporate decisions, geopolitical pressures and consumer expectations in today’s global business environment.”

The study looked at the impact of these decisions on three critical consumer mindset metrics: net brand buzz, brand consideration set (group of products a buyer evaluates when making a purchase decision) and purchase intent. It also analyzed how these effects are moderated by factors such as a company’s ESG reputation, the timing of its decision relative to industry peers and whether the firm operates in a business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C) context.

Companies that withdrew from Russian operations experienced a notable increase in net brand buzz, reflecting positive consumer sentiment over an eight-week period following the announcement, suggesting consumers generally favor companies that take a stand against geopolitical aggression.

The positive consumer sentiment was even stronger for companies with a robust ESG reputation. These firms saw enhanced brand consideration and purchase intent, indicating that a strong ESG profile can magnify the benefits of socially responsible actions during geopolitical crises.

“Interestingly, companies that delayed their withdrawal until after their industry peers saw a greater boost in net buzz,” Ganesan said. “This indicates that while early action is valued, there are strategic advantages to carefully timing such decisions in complex geopolitical environments.”

The research also uncovered variations in consumer reactions based on whether a company operates in a B2B or B2C context, providing nuanced insights for businesses on how different markets might perceive their actions during geopolitical crises.

This study contributes to understanding the relationship between such corporate actions and consumer mindset metrics in a novel geopolitical context, providing valuable insights for managerial decision-making and public policy.

When operating in politically sensitive regions, companies should account for the diverse interests of stakeholders, invest in ESG as a form of reputational insurance, carefully time major decisions, monitor consumer metrics and tailor strategies to industry context.

Ganesan challenges policymakers to understand the complex pressures businesses face during geopolitical crises and provide clear guidance that considers the varying impacts on B2B and B2C sectors.

He said, “By understanding the intricate relationship between corporate actions, geopolitical events and consumer perceptions, businesses can navigate these challenging waters more effectively, balancing ethical imperatives with business objectives.”