The Diminishing Marginal Worth of Elite College Football Players

Abstract

Previous research on the marginal revenue products (MRP) of elite college football players indicates that the contributions of such players to annual game-day revenues exceed, on average, $500,000 in 2004 dollars. An inconspicuous feature of this research, however, is the absence of control for diminishing revenue contributions. Employing data on college football game-day revenues used in the literature, our results indicate that the MRPs of elite college football players are significantly smaller than previously estimated, and decrease with each additional elite player on a team's roster. (J31)