[Bruce Wang]

Somebody posted this on Reddit.  Can't vouch for the accuracy of the data or the soundness of the methodology for the ROI (broken link for footnote). 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/lv?k...full#gid=0

[Bruce Wang]

Somebody posted this on Reddit.  Can't vouch for the accuracy of the data or the soundness of the methodology for the ROI (broken link for footnote). 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/lv?k...full#gid=0

[stupac2]

IIRC the guy who put it together is a ND fan (which is probably why it's sorted for African American players instead of all, that puts them on top).

Speaking of which, is our GSR for African-American players really that low? That seems ridiculously low for us.

[stupac2]

IIRC the guy who put it together is a ND fan (which is probably why it's sorted for African American players instead of all, that puts them on top).

Speaking of which, is our GSR for African-American players really that low? That seems ridiculously low for us.

[yvonne]

https://web1.ncaa.org/app_data/inst2012/...auto,0,800

[yvonne]

https://web1.ncaa.org/app_data/inst2012/...auto,0,800

[yvonne]

Are the salaries the mean or the median? A few highly paid skill position players (and left tackles, if you believe The Blind Side) could tip those stats if it's mean.

[yvonne]

Are the salaries the mean or the median? A few highly paid skill position players (and left tackles, if you believe The Blind Side) could tip those stats if it's mean.

[Bruce Wang]

Are the salaries the mean or the median? A few highly paid skill position players (and left tackles, if you believe The Blind Side) could tip those stats if it's mean.

Has to be the median or they excluded NFL salaries.  Otherwise the UT, UF, OSU ROI would not be so much lower than the overall ROI.  Unless the non-NFL football players from these schools are all unemployed?

I have my doubts about this data.  How on earth did they did total lifetime earnings of football players, let alone broken out by race?

[Bruce Wang]

Are the salaries the mean or the median? A few highly paid skill position players (and left tackles, if you believe The Blind Side) could tip those stats if it's mean.

Has to be the median or they excluded NFL salaries.  Otherwise the UT, UF, OSU ROI would not be so much lower than the overall ROI.  Unless the non-NFL football players from these schools are all unemployed?

I have my doubts about this data.  How on earth did they did total lifetime earnings of football players, let alone broken out by race?

[97fan]

It looks to me like the methodology here was to take the expected 30-year return for all graduates of a particular college, and then to apply that number to that school's graduation rates for football players, including football players of different races. (Salary info for all graduates would likely yield a much tighter bunching of the median and mean numbers than salary info for football players would.)

I'm sure there's no publicly available data on how much money football players from different schools can be expected to make over 30 years. But even if there were, and means were used instead of medians, I'm not sure the football factories would fare all that well in this comparison. Keep in mind that NFL careers tend to be quite short.

[97fan]

It looks to me like the methodology here was to take the expected 30-year return for all graduates of a particular college, and then to apply that number to that school's graduation rates for football players, including football players of different races. (Salary info for all graduates would likely yield a much tighter bunching of the median and mean numbers than salary info for football players would.)

I'm sure there's no publicly available data on how much money football players from different schools can be expected to make over 30 years. But even if there were, and means were used instead of medians, I'm not sure the football factories would fare all that well in this comparison. Keep in mind that NFL careers tend to be quite short.

[Roberton3]

I'm very skeptical about this.  What it's calling ROI clearly isn't: ROI is expressed as a ratio or a percentage, not a dollar amount.  This might be a net present value, or just a total of earnings, but it's not ROI.  And since the person who put together the data doesn't even know what ROI is, I seriously doubt that he did a good job with the rest of the calculations.

Edit: Of course, I do think that football recruits should be picking good academic institutions, and one reason (among many) for that is the financial return on a good education.  But that financial return is a surprisingly hard thing to measure accurately, and this spreadsheet seems like it's not even close to providing a credible estimate.

[Roberton3]

I'm very skeptical about this.  What it's calling ROI clearly isn't: ROI is expressed as a ratio or a percentage, not a dollar amount.  This might be a net present value, or just a total of earnings, but it's not ROI.  And since the person who put together the data doesn't even know what ROI is, I seriously doubt that he did a good job with the rest of the calculations.

Edit: Of course, I do think that football recruits should be picking good academic institutions, and one reason (among many) for that is the financial return on a good education.  But that financial return is a surprisingly hard thing to measure accurately, and this spreadsheet seems like it's not even close to providing a credible estimate.