Author's personal copy Rev Ind Organ DOI 10.1007/s11151-017-9590-z The National Collegiate Athletic Association Cartel: Why it Exists, How it Works, and What it Does 1,2,3 1,2,3 Allen R. Sanderson • John J. Siegfried Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2017 Abstract In this essay we consider why American colleges and universities par- ticipate in big-time commercialized intercollegiate sports, and how sports came to play such a prominent role on American college and university campuses. We also review how the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) developed as a body to regulate player safety and transformed itself into an economic regulator, the means by which the NCAA attempts to maintain its control, increase revenues, and reduce costs for college sports programs. We also examine how the organization succeeds in the face of institutional characteristics that imply that its cartel activities would be doomed. Finally, we speculate on what changes might be on the horizon for the NCAA and college athletics. Keywords Cartel Á Market power Á National Collegiate Athletic Association The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. George Orwell, 1984 & John J. Siegfried
[email protected] 1 University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA 2 Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA 3 University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia 123 Author's personal copy A. R. Sanderson, J. J. Siegfried 1 Introduction This essay describes the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) economic cartel: why it exists; how it works; what it does; the effects that it has on its member institutions; and its likely future.