America’s institutions of higher learning may never expect to Hail Mary—or just hike—their means out of the nationwide college admission issue, according to new research. Based on a data analysis at the University of Georgia, a study that was published this month in the academic journal Research in Higher Education determined that adding a football team did not succeed in attracting new students ( and their money ). The study’s artists examined NCAA and U.S. S. Information from the Department of Education for 36 NCAA member institutions that added football to their athletic departments between 2002 and 2018: from public Division I schools like South Alabama to private D-II I schools like Becker College ( Mass. ) ), which ended up shuttering in 2021. They found that, on average, adding sport did not have any positive results on long-term enrollment—or the admission of Black individuals, specifically—nor did it have a “significant influence ” on education and fee income. According to the authors, there was a significant increase in football-related admission because it appeared to be concentrated in the year that colleges added the group. Eventually, it merely fades out. This would give the impression that the football-related profits are at best scattering. The study adds to the ritual of academic work over the past few decades as an investigation into how a school’s investment in varsity athletics has benefited its larger mission and business type. Most prominent among this study music, perhaps, is the so-called “Flutie Effect, ” named for the rise in applications at Boston College following BC lineman Doug Flutie’s classic, game-winning hurl against Miami in 1984. The most recent study did not account for how well newly added sports programs performed on the field or for other variables that might have had an impact on membership at schools over the same time period. “This is the closest we can come to saying, what would have happened to a college if it never added football, ” the study ’s lead author Welch Suggs, an associate professor at Georgia, said in a statement. “It’s often said that activities is the front door of the school. However, what we are seeing is that institutions that did n’t construct that front porch are likely to receive the exact number of students and education as those that just received. ” This summary cuts against standard wisdom—and some past research—about the administrative benefits of adding a football program, especially for tuition-dependent schools. An oft-cited 2015 study in the magazine, College Planning & Management, found that among six small universities, adding football and a marching band helped boost the student body. That same year, an article in Strategic Enrollment Management Quarterly, drew a similar conclusion. A 2021 study was published in the Journal of Higher Education Athletics & Sports. Innovation discovered a link between small, privately owned colleges that recently added football and spikes in student enrollment for minority and male students. Schools have been building football teams consistently in the hope of reversing enrollment declines in light of this research and their leaders ‘ intuitions. As of last fall, 772 collegiate institutions ( from D-I to NAIA ) nationwide were offering the sport, according to the National Football Foundation. By the end of 2025, that number includes 10 additional programs that will be added. Football is the only sport that contributes more to the vibrancy of a college campus, according to NFF President &amp Steve Hatchell, CEO, stated in a statement last year. The new study warns that that vibrancy may have its practical limits, noting that the concussion-producing activity also has some legal obligations or ethical issues. “Football is not a pigskin panacea for colleges and universities, ” the study stated. The health risks associated with sport competition are acute and could grow. In light of declining enrollments, these will raise important moral questions for college leaders to address. ”