IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/amerec/v62y2017i1p77-98.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An Efficiency Evaluation of Men’s College Basketball Coaches

Author

Listed:
  • Ira Horowitz

Abstract

An ESPN panel of experts ranked the top 51 men’s college basketball coaches as of June 2014. I evaluate the production efficiency of those coaches, along with (a) 25 others who received honorable mention and (b) 86 whose teams earned either an NCAA or National Invitation Tournament (NIT) bid in the three then-most-recent seasons, and (c) 27 that were fired at the end of the 2013-2014 season. The evaluation uses data envelopment analysis and its three measures of efficiency: technical, overall technical, and scale. The measures do not necessarily yield the same rankings, with the efficiency-based rankings modestly corresponding to those of the panel when based on the coach’s entire career and somewhat less so when based on the 2012-2014 data. An ordered-logit analysis highlights the correspondingly modest role efficiency played in determining what it took to get into the sample and, by contrast, the dominant role that winning played in the process.

Suggested Citation

  • Ira Horowitz, 2017. "An Efficiency Evaluation of Men’s College Basketball Coaches," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 62(1), pages 77-98, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:amerec:v:62:y:2017:i:1:p:77-98
    DOI: 10.1177/0569434516652037
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0569434516652037
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0569434516652037?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Horowitz, I. & Zappe, C., 1995. "The linear programming alternative to policy capturing for eliciting criteria weights in the performance appraisal process," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 23(6), pages 667-676, December.
    2. Walter C. Neale, 1964. "The Peculiar Economics of Professional Sports," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 78(1), pages 1-14.
    3. Paul Holmes, 2011. "Win or Go Home: Why College Football Coaches Get Fired," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 12(2), pages 157-178, April.
    4. Dieter J. Haas, 2003. "Technical Efficiency in the Major League Soccer," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 4(3), pages 203-215, August.
    5. Simon Rottenberg, 1956. "The Baseball Players' Labor Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 64, pages 242-242.
    6. Joel G. Maxcy, 2013. "Efficiency and Managerial Performance in FBS College Football," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 14(4), pages 368-388, August.
    7. McFadden, Daniel, 1974. "The measurement of urban travel demand," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 303-328, November.
    8. Carlos Pestana Barros & Stephanie Leach, 2006. "Performance evaluation of the English Premier Football League with data envelopment analysis," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(12), pages 1449-1458.
    9. Michael S. Rimler & Seongho Song & David T. Yi, 2010. "Estimating Production Efficiency in Men’s NCAA College Basketball: A Bayesian Approach," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 11(3), pages 287-315, June.
    10. Zak, Thomas A & Huang, Cliff J & Siegfried, John J, 1979. "Production Efficiency: The Case of Professional Basketball," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 52(3), pages 379-392, July.
    11. Lawrence Hadley & Marc Poitras & John Ruggiero & Scott Knowles, 2000. "Performance evaluation of National Football League teams," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(2), pages 63-70.
    12. John L. Fizel & Michael P. D'Itri, 1997. "Managerial Efficiency, Managerial Succession and Organizational Performance," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(4), pages 295-308.
    13. R. D. Banker & A. Charnes & W. W. Cooper, 1984. "Some Models for Estimating Technical and Scale Inefficiencies in Data Envelopment Analysis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(9), pages 1078-1092, September.
    14. Dieter J. Haas, 2003. "Productive efficiency of English football teams-a data envelopment analysis approach," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(5), pages 403-410.
    15. Carlos Barros & Pedro Garcia-del-Barrio, 2011. "Productivity drivers and market dynamics in the Spanish first division football league," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 35(1), pages 5-13, February.
    16. Trevor Collier & Andrew L. Johnson & John Ruggiero, 2011. "Measuring Technical Efficiency in Sports," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 12(6), pages 579-598, December.
    17. Barros, Carlos Pestana & Garcia-del-Barrio, Pedro, 2008. "Efficiency measurement of the English football Premier League with a random frontier model," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 994-1002, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. J. Brandon Bolen & Jon Rezek & Joshua D. Pitts, 2019. "Performance Efficiency in NCAA Basketball," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 20(2), pages 218-241, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Halkos, George & Tzeremes, Nickolaos, 2012. "Evaluating professional tennis players’ career performance: A Data Envelopment Analysis approach," MPRA Paper 41516, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Andrés Picazo-Tadeo & Francisco González-Gómez, 2010. "Does playing several competitions influence a team’s league performance? Evidence from Spanish professional football," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 18(3), pages 413-432, September.
    3. Jardin, Mathieu, 2009. "Efficiency of French football clubs and its dynamics," MPRA Paper 19828, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Francisco González-Gómez & Andrés J. Picazo-Tadeo, 2010. "Can We Be Satisfied With Our Football Team? Evidence From Spanish Professional Football," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 11(4), pages 418-442, August.
    5. Kostas Kounetas, 2014. "Greek football clubs’ efficiency before and after Euro 2004 Victory: a bootstrap approach," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 22(4), pages 623-645, December.
    6. J. Brandon Bolen & Jon Rezek & Joshua D. Pitts, 2019. "Performance Efficiency in NCAA Basketball," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 20(2), pages 218-241, February.
    7. Fiona Carmichael & Giambattista Rossi & Denis Thomas, 2017. "Production, Efficiency, and Corruption in Italian Serie A Football," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 18(1), pages 34-57, January.
    8. Carlos Pestana Barros & Gaël Bertrand & Laurent Botti & Scott Tainsky, 2014. "Cost efficiency of French rugby clubs," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(23), pages 2721-2732, August.
    9. Halkos, George & Tzeremes, Nickolaos, 2011. "A non-parametric analysis of the efficiency of the top European football clubs," MPRA Paper 31173, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Carlos Pestana Barros & Stephanie Leach, 2006. "Analyzing the Performance of the English F.A. Premier League With an Econometric Frontier Model," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 7(4), pages 391-407, November.
    11. Fabíola Zambom-Ferraresi & Lucía Isabel García-Cebrián & Fernando Lera-López & Belén Iráizoz, 2017. "Performance Evaluation in the UEFA Champions League," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 18(5), pages 448-470, June.
    12. Halkos, George & Tzeremes, Nickolaos, 2011. "Applying conditional DEA to measure football clubs’ performance: Evidence from the top 25 European clubs," MPRA Paper 31278, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Barros, Carlos Pestana & Garcia-del-Barrio, Pedro, 2008. "Efficiency measurement of the English football Premier League with a random frontier model," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 994-1002, September.
    14. Boon L. Lee & Andrew C. Worthington, 2013. "A note on the ‘Linsanity’ of measuring the relative efficiency of National Basketball Association guards," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(29), pages 4193-4202, October.
    15. Carlos Pestana Barros & Stephanie Leach, 2006. "Performance evaluation of the English Premier Football League with data envelopment analysis," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(12), pages 1449-1458.
    16. Carlos Pestana Barros & Nicolas Peypoch & Scott Tainsky, 2014. "Cost efficiency of French soccer league teams," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(8), pages 781-789, March.
    17. I. García-Sánchez, 2007. "Efficiency and effectiveness of Spanish football teams: a three-stage-DEA approach," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 15(1), pages 21-45, March.
    18. Carlos Pestana Barros & Peter Wanke & Otávio Figueiredo, 2015. "The Brazilian Soccer Championship: an efficiency analysis," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(9), pages 906-915, February.
    19. Nikos Chatzistamoulou & Kounetas Kostas & Antonakis Theodor, 2022. "Salary Cap, Organizational Gap, and Catch-up in the Performance of NBA Teams: A Two-Stage DEA Model Under Heterogeneity," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 23(2), pages 123-155, February.
    20. Wen-Jhan Jane, 2013. "Overpayment and Reservation Salary in the Nippon Professional Baseball League," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 14(6), pages 563-583, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    college basketball; coaches; efficiency; data envelopment analysis;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Z2 - Other Special Topics - - Sports Economics
    • Z22 - Other Special Topics - - Sports Economics - - - Labor Issues

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:amerec:v:62:y:2017:i:1:p:77-98. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://journals.sagepub.com/home/aex .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.