THE INTERCOLLEGIATE ATHLETIC CARTEL: THE ECONOMICS, HISTORY, INSTITUTIONS, AND LEGAL ARRANGEMENTS OF THE NATIONAL COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) was founded in 1906 in an attempt to control the widespread violence in college football. Since its beginning the NCAA has grown from an organization that standardized sports rules and conducted tournaments to a regulatory body that today controls virtually all aspects of college sports in which males participate. In addition to restricting the number of athletic contests produced (and where they may be televised) and establishing strict rules limiting the compensation paid to student-athletes for their services the NCAA maintains a Department of Enforcement which investigates alleged violations of its rules and penalizes the violators.;The question posed at the outset is how to model the behavior of the NCAA and college athletics. The interpretation offered in this dissertation is that the NCAA has helped engineer an efficient cartel in college athletics with restrictions in the output (athletic contests) and the input (student-athletes) market. To counter the standard cartel cheating problem the NCAA has also developed an enforcement mechanism. But unlike a cartel in the business world the intercollegiate cartel operates in a non-profit setting and, therefore, implications based on this difference are developed in this dissertation.;This dissertation is an industry study of college athletics. The introductory chapter details the specific questions this study addresses and contrasts the possible explanations for the organization of intercollegiate athletics. The second, third, fourth, and fifth chapters trace the history of the NCAA. Based on the wealth of evidence presented the fifth chapter concludes that cartel theory offers the most plausible explanation for the actions of the NCAA.;Given that cartel theory provides the best explanation for intercollegiate athletics, the sixth chapter examines the internal functioning of the NCAA and explores the actions an efficient cartel monitor should undertake to ensure the limiting agreements are followed. The seventh chapter details the legal issues and resulting economic implications that pertain to intercollegiate athletics. The last chapter summarizes and highlights the major results of this dissertation.