How the Rich-Get-Richer phenomenon relates to college sports

A great example of the Rich-Get-Richer phenomenon is in college sports. In college football, a while ago a few great players randomly started attending a school, but ever since then that school has been at a level far above most others. Take LSU or USC or Oklahoma for instance: since their upperclassmen are so good, the best recruits want to go there to play. Good recruits wouldn't want to go to a 'poor' school (in terms of performance) since they want to win, so all the other schools are left with the remaining recruits. Sure there are some anomalies here and there, but for the most part this is true. In fact, when asked if he would consider leaving USC for the NFL, Pete Carrol pointed out that in the NFL you get 1 of the top players in the country per year, whereas at USC he gets 10. Last year, NU Lacrosse got 5 of the top 6 best high school seniors in the country since we're so good.

I think this is a really good example! The more I think about it the more the whole 'rich-get-richer' scheme works for anything that is popular today. If a something's ability to increase in popularity is directly proportional to its current popularity, then how does something that is not initially popular become popular? How is a school with poor athletics going to recruit good player to improve its teams, if the better player want to go to the better schools?... This is a very interesting problem.

The reason that some smaller schools, or schools that are not typical college sports powerhouses get good recruits is because they offer the players something that the bigger programs cannot. This could be a lot more playing time as a freshman and sophomore when they otherwise wouldn't otherwise play, or a coaching staff that the recruit likes a lot more than the bigger programs. Although this is not always the case, it does happen occasionally. This doesn't disprove the rich-get-richer theory, but it means that there is a lot more that goes into the college sports recruiting equation than just past performance.

The more I think about it the more the whole 'rich-get-richer' scheme works for anything that is popular today.

That's a good point. I don't mean to get off topic but isn't the same theory true in our very own forum. Maybe it's just me, but when I'm scrolling through topics looking for ideas to post for points I most often check the ones with more replies/views which then increases the reply/view count even further. All it takes is somebody to start a thread with a reasonably good idea, and then by luck the "rich-get-richer" effect will take over and views go through the roof.

I'm not arguing that the posters of "Twitter's Enormous Success" and "The Conficker Worm" got lucky, but I think it is fair to think that some element of 'rich-get-richer' went into it.

BNET: Business school rankings content and context

"By extension, positive rankings improve quality. The increased selectivity at admissions allows schools to pick the best possible candidates. These candidates are more attractive prior to their MBA and are logically more attractive with the added value of their MBA.

Not only are they inherently more attractive but, of course, recruiters also read rankings and will recruit from highly ranked schools. Since there are simply too many schools to choose from in the total pool, recruiters select ten to 15 schools that fit the profiles they seek.

The snowball effect of the rankings promotes a rich get richer and poor get poorer cycle and creates a Catch-22 trap from which it is difficult to extricate oneself, win or lose, researchers Dr Kevin G Corley and Prof Dennis Gioia reported in 2000."

Ever since we discussed the "rich get richer" model in class, I started thinking about college rankings. There may be some "inherent quality" or "fitness parameter" to each school as we discussed in class, but I honestly feel like any school in the top 20 is comparable. So why are the rankings as they are? Because a few schools were founded much earlier than others, establishing reputations and legacies. So these schools get richer and richer as time goes on, which explains why there isn't much shuffling in the rankings. Except for U Chicago, which decided to certainly report certain types of donations and spiked in the rankings a few years ago.

Could Business School Rankings have brought our economy to a screeching halt?

Like in class with picking a blue urn or yellow urn, could business school rankings have potentially destroyed our economy because of cascading? Many, if not all captains of industry and major CEOs and CFOs have an MBA. Where did they get their MBAs from? Mostly from top ranked graduate business schools. Those schools were ranked primarily based on alumni and average salary coming out of school. So if alumni plays a big part in MBA programs, and students that get in more because of legacy, donations, and other factors instead of ability and merit, then they take the places of those that deserve the spots.

So if students get their MBAs from top programs that necessarily don't deserve those degrees, and then go out into the job market, who hires them? Companies that recruit based on rankings. So the cascading effect (thanks to business school rankings), are putting more and more incompetent individuals in charge of financial decisions that affect not only the company, but the entire economy if that sector goes down.

Just a theory...