IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jospec/v8y2007i1p19-38.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Corruption in College Basketball? Evidence of Tanking in Postseason Conference Tournaments

Author

Listed:
  • Ed Balsdon

    (San Diego State University)

  • Lesley Fong

    (San Diego State University)

  • Mark A. Thayer

    (San Diego State University)

Abstract

This article observes that regular-season champions in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) men’s basketball often perform poorly in season-ending conference tournaments and examines two alternative explanations for this underperformance. We employ data on regular-season champions during the period 1990-2004 to test between competing models of “tanking†motivated by (a) fitness saving for the NCAA tournament and (b) a form of corruption. Our empirical results confirm that systematic under-performance does occur and indicate that corruption is a likely motivation.

Suggested Citation

  • Ed Balsdon & Lesley Fong & Mark A. Thayer, 2007. "Corruption in College Basketball? Evidence of Tanking in Postseason Conference Tournaments," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 8(1), pages 19-38, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jospec:v:8:y:2007:i:1:p:19-38
    DOI: 10.1177/1527002505275095
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1527002505275095
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1527002505275095?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. Lazear, Edward P & Rosen, Sherwin, 1981. "Rank-Order Tournaments as Optimum Labor Contracts," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(5), pages 841-864, October.
    2. James McClure & Lee Spector, 1997. "Tournament performance and “Agency” problems: An empirical investigation of “March madness”," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 21(1), pages 61-68, March.
    3. Canice Prendergast, 1999. "The Provision of Incentives in Firms," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(1), pages 7-63, March.
    4. Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1993. "Corruption," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 108(3), pages 599-617.
    5. Porter, Robert H & Zona, J Douglas, 1993. "Detection of Bid Rigging in Procurement Auctions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(3), pages 518-538, June.
    6. Gary S. Becker & George J. Stigler, 1974. "Law Enforcement, Malfeasance, and Compensation of Enforcers," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 3(1), pages 1-18, January.
    7. Rosen, Sherwin, 1986. "Prizes and Incentives in Elimination Tournaments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 701-715, September.
    8. Green, Jerry R & Stokey, Nancy L, 1983. "A Comparison of Tournaments and Contracts," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 91(3), pages 349-364, June.
    9. Beck A. Taylor & Justin G. Trogdon, 2002. "Losing to Win: Tournament Incentives in the National Basketball Association," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 20(1), pages 23-41, January.
    10. Christopher Ferrall & Anthony A. Smith, 1999. "A Sequential Game Model Of Sports Championship Series: Theory And Estimation," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(4), pages 704-719, November.
    11. Mark Duggan & Steven D. Levitt, 2002. "Winning Isn't Everything: Corruption in Sumo Wrestling," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1594-1605, December.
    12. O'Keeffe, Mary & Viscusi, W Kip & Zeckhauser, Richard J, 1984. "Economic Contests: Comparative Reward Schemes," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 2(1), pages 27-56, January.
    13. Ehrenberg, Ronald G & Bognanno, Michael L, 1990. "Do Tournaments Have Incentive Effects?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(6), pages 1307-1324, December.
    14. Ronald G. Ehrenberg & Michael L. Bognanno, 1990. "The Incentive Effects of Tournaments Revisited: Evidence from the European PGA Tour," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 43(3), pages 74, April.
    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. Rodney J. Paul & Andrew P. Weinbach, 2011. "Investigating Allegations of Pointshaving in NCAA Basketball Using Actual Sportsbook Betting Percentages," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 12(4), pages 432-447, August.
    2. Helena Fornwagner, 2017. "Incentives to lose revisited: The NHL and its tournament incentives," Working Papers 2017-07, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    3. Helmut M. Dietl & Markus Lang & Stephan Werner, 2010. "Corruption in Professional Sumo: An Update on the Study of Duggan and Levitt," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 11(4), pages 383-396, August.
    4. Christian Deutscher & Marco Sahm & Sandra Schneemann & Hendrik Sonnabend, 2019. "Strategic Investment Decisions in Multi-stage Contests with Heterogeneous Players," CESifo Working Paper Series 7474, CESifo.
    5. László Csató, 2020. "The UEFA Champions League seeding is not strategy-proof since the 2015/16 season," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 292(1), pages 161-169, September.
    6. Fornwagner, Helena, 2019. "Incentives to lose revisited: The NHL and its tournament incentives," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 75(PB).
    7. Zimmer Timothy & Kuethe Todd H, 2009. "Testing for Bias and Manipulation in the National Basketball Association Playoffs," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 5(3), pages 1-13, July.
    8. Matthias Kräkel, 2014. "Sandbagging," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 15(3), pages 263-284, June.
    9. Feddersen, Arne & Humphreys, Brad & Soebbing, Brian, 2012. "Cost Incentives in European Football," Working Papers 2012-13, University of Alberta, Department of Economics.
    10. Jeff Borland & Mark Chicu & Robert D. Macdonald, 2009. "Do Teams Always Lose to Win? Performance Incentives and the Player Draft in the Australian Football League," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 10(5), pages 451-484, October.
    11. Christian Deutscher & Marco Sahm & Sandra Schneemann & Hendrik Sonnabend, 2022. "Strategic investment decisions in multi-stage contests with heterogeneous players," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 93(2), pages 281-317, September.
    12. Joseph Price & Brian P. Soebbing & David Berri & Brad R. Humphreys, 2010. "Tournament Incentives, League Policy, and NBA Team Performance Revisited," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 11(2), pages 117-135, April.
    13. Grimshaw Scott D. & Sabin R. Paul & Willes Keith M., 2013. "Analysis of the NCAA Men’s Final Four TV audience," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 9(2), pages 115-126, June.

    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. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2373-2437 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Michael Waldman, 2012. "Theory and Evidence in Internal LaborMarkets [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    3. Bernd Frick, 2003. "Contest Theory and Sport," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 19(4), pages 512-529, Winter.
    4. Waldman, Michael, 2013. "Classic promotion tournaments versus market-based tournaments," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 198-210.
    5. Tor Eriksson & Sabrina Teyssier & Marie‐Claire Villeval, 2009. "Self‐Selection And The Efficiency Of Tournaments," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 47(3), pages 530-548, July.
    6. Duran, Mihael, 2011. "Nachträgliche Reduktion von Vorstandsbezügen: Eine ökonomische Analyse der Herabsetzungsmöglichkeit von Vorstandsbezügen nach dem VorstAG [Ex post Reduction of Executive Compensation: An economic r," MPRA Paper 33815, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Benno Torgler & Sascha L. Schmidt & Bruno S. Frey, 2006. "Relative Income Position And Performance: An Empirical Panel Analysis," IEW - Working Papers 268, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    8. Dmitry Ryvkin & Andreas Ortmann, 2008. "The Predictive Power of Three Prominent Tournament Formats," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(3), pages 492-504, March.
    9. Ozbeklik, Serkan & Smith, Janet Kiholm, 2017. "Risk taking in competition: Evidence from match play golf tournaments," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 506-523.
    10. Benno Torgler & Justina A.V. Fischer, 2006. "Does Envy Destroy Social Fundamentals? The Impact of Relative Income Position on Social Capital," Working Papers 2006.38, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    11. Sun, Sophia Li & Habib, Ahsan, 2020. "Determinants and consequences of tournament incentives: A survey of the literature in accounting and finance," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    12. Benno Torgler & Sascha L. Schmidt & Bruno S. Frey, 2006. "The Power of Positional Concerns: A Panel Analysis," CREMA Working Paper Series 2006-19, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    13. Garicano, Luis & Palacios-Huerta, Ignacio, 2005. "Sabotage in Tournaments: Making the Beautiful Game a Bit Less Beautiful," CEPR Discussion Papers 5231, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    14. Bernd Irlenbusch, 2006. "Experimental perspectives on incentives in organisations," 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. 14(1), pages 1-24, February.
    15. Chirok Han & Changhui Kang & Sam-Ho Lee, 2016. "Measuring Effort Incentives In A Tournament With Many Participants: Theory And Application," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 54(2), pages 1240-1250, April.
    16. Miklos-Thal, Jeanine & Ullrich, Hannes, 2010. "Effort in Nomination Contests: Evidence from Professional Soccer," MPRA Paper 24340, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Harbring, Christine & Irlenbusch, Bernd, 2003. "An experimental study on tournament design," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(4), pages 443-464, August.
    18. Loukas Balafoutas & E. Glenn Dutcher & Florian Lindner & Dmitry Ryvkin, 2017. "The Optimal Allocation Of Prizes In Tournaments Of Heterogeneous Agents," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(1), pages 461-478, January.
    19. Thierry Lallemand & Robert Plasman & François Rycx, 2008. "Women and Competition in Elimination Tournaments," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 9(1), pages 3-19, February.
    20. Stefan Szymanski, 2010. "The Economic Design of Sporting Contests," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: The Comparative Economics of Sport, chapter 1, pages 1-78, Palgrave Macmillan.
    21. Beck A. Taylor & Justin G. Trogdon, 2002. "Losing to Win: Tournament Incentives in the National Basketball Association," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 20(1), pages 23-41, January.

    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:jospec:v:8:y:2007:i:1:p:19-38. 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: .

    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.