When College Football Enters the Admissions Office

What football reveals about how students choose colleges

College admissions has an unlikely accelerator: football. When a team wins — or even just captures national attention — applications rise, out-of-state interest grows, and the university’s brand moves up in a hierarchy that teenagers pay closer attention to than adults might assume.

The Cinderella story of the year is Indiana University’s meteoric rise as a football school under the leadership of Curt Cignetti. A billionaire donor, a record-breaking sponsorship, and skyrocketing ticket sales certainly impact the school’s bottom line. But the tuition revenue generated by out-of-state students, who now represent nearly 50% of the student body and each pay $30k more per year than their in-state counterparts, is staggering.

The University of Tennessee is another recent example of football’s influence on admissions. In 2020, the University of Tennessee–Knoxville received just over 25,000 applications. Football wasn’t driving national interest, and the team finished the 2021 season at 7–6. But under coach Josh Heupel, everything changed. In 2022, Tennessee went 11–2 and finished No. 6 in the national polls — its best season in two decades.

The admissions cycle that followed saw more than 50,000 applications, double what the university had received three years earlier. The 2023 football season produced another strong run at 10–3 and a berth in the College Football Playoff. This fall, applications jumped again to 63,000, including more than 46,000 from out-of-state students.

Sports success functions here as a visibility engine. Students apply to schools they know, and athletics — particularly football at large public universities — make universities culturally visible in the teenage imagination long before academic criteria are formed.

This phenomenon isn’t new. It was documented decades ago as the “Flutie Effect,” when Boston College’s applications spiked after Doug Flutie’s famous 1984 Hail Mary touchdown. What followed wasn’t just a short-term surge — it was a durable case study in how athletic success can change the external perception of a school almost overnight.

Let’s also examine James Madison University’s application surge after joining the FBS and Sunbelt League for the 2023 season. JMU received nearly 45,000 applications this fall in the midst of a 12-1 regular season record and berth in the CFP. The record-breaking applications marked a 34% increase from 2023 and a first-ever even split between in-state and out-of-state applicants. Coincidence?

The University of Colorado-Boulder offers an alternate version of the effect, one that doesn’t require winning at all. After hiring Deion Sanders, the university became a cultural storyline almost overnight. Sanders generated unprecedented media exposure, social media engagement, and national curiosity.

The application cycle that followed saw Colorado’s undergraduate applications rise roughly 20 percent to 68,000, despite the team not producing a winning season. For many teenagers, Boulder became a school worth considering not because of academics or rankings, but because it suddenly existed in their cultural field of vision.

If admissions were purely academic, Nobel Prizes would drive more applications than bowl games.

From the admissions side, the mechanism is surprisingly consistent: visibility leads to consideration, consideration leads to applications, and applications lead to selectivity. Universities understand this incentive structure well. More applications allow schools to admit a smaller percentage of students, which improves their selectivity metrics and, eventually, the rankings and reputational signals that donors, parents, and legislators monitor.

There is a feedback loop at work. Winning (or buzzing) teams generate media exposure and cultural presence. That presence expands a school’s audience. That audience becomes an applicant pool (often including more higher-paying out-of-state students). A larger applicant pool increases selectivity. Selectivity increases prestige. Prestige attracts more donors, which funds more athletics — and the loop continues.

From the student side, the psychology is simpler. Teenagers often use proxies for quality before they know what quality means. Sports success is an easy proxy to interpret. It signals energy, community, and belonging. It signals that something exciting is happening there. It signals that the school has a brand worth affiliating with.

In my work as an independent college consultant, I’ve seen this firsthand. When Colorado hired Deion Sanders, I heard the school’s name more in one year from students than in the previous five years combined. Tennessee began appearing on lists from students who had never been to Knoxville. Clemson and Georgia saw similar visibility gains during their championship years. These stories are not about curriculum; they are about attention.

If admissions were a purely academic marketplace, Nobel Prizes would drive more applications than bowl games. Most teenagers don’t follow Nobel Prize announcements, but they know who Coach Prime and Curt Cignetti are. They follow sports, social media, and cultural narratives. Universities know this, and some have quietly recalibrated their strategies accordingly.

College admissions is often described as opaque, but one of its dynamics is surprisingly clear: universities behave like brands operating in a competitive marketplace. Winning football games — or simply looking like a program on the rise — happens to be one of higher education’s most reliable brand-building tools.

And perhaps this isn’t as irrational as it looks. For many students, college isn’t just an academic choice — it’s a four-year experiment in belonging. Football simply gives them a visible place to imagine themselves.