College athletics have faced a lot of challenges and changes in the last two decades. Sports like football and basketball have been the main money-making streams for NCAA. With the popularity of college athletics growing, members of the business community have seen this as an opportunity to make money, especially members of the media. In turn, student-athletes have factored the ability to make money off of their own name, image, and likeness (NIL) into their college education decision. In order to explore this relationship between college athletics and the media industry, I analyzed how media rights in college basketball have affected college basketball recruiting over the last five years. Teams are not only recruiting players from high school, but they have to work hard and recruit players from the transfer portal, which allows for mid-collegiate-career changes. With the introduction of NIL, recruiting highly ranked players has become a complex process in that teams with smaller budgets feel helpless because money is not an issue for the bigger schools. In my research, I analyzed players and teams from all levels within Division 1 basketball, and through statistical analysis, The research found that better players are attracted by more affluent athletic programs. Teams with higher media rights revenue and overall revenue have a big advantage when it comes to recruiting highly rated high-school players or transfers. School enrollment does not play a significant role in some cases because student-athletes are mostly focused on their athletic experience.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ETSU/oai:dc.etsu.edu:etd-5733 |
| Date | 01 May 2023 |
| Creators | Dedolli, Odri |
| Publisher | Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University |
| Source Sets | East Tennessee State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Electronic Theses and Dissertations |
| Rights | Copyright by the authors. |
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