Athletic departments' operating expenses as a predictor of their Directors' Cup standing

The NACDA Directors' Cup is a competition utilizing an unbiased scoring system that encourages a broad based athletic department as the standard for defining intercollegiate athletic success. Therefore, for NCAA DI athletic administrators the Directors' Cup should be the standard for defining intercollegiate athletic success. The purpose of this dissertation was to determine if knowing an institutions operating expense could predict their Directors' Cup standing. Two variables, operating expenses and the total student athletes, were gathered from RADA data from the top 100 NCAA DI Directors' Cup finishers for the years 2008 through 2012. The top 100 Directors' Cup finishers were then broken into quartiles and a ANOVA was conducted on the total operating expenses, total student athletes, and operating expenses per student athlete. Total operating expenses proved to be statistically significant, and therefore, indicated operating expenses directly related to Directors' Cup standings. It is recommended that intercollegiate athletic administrators attempting to maximize financial resources while striving for athletic success should use the Directors' Cup as a standard of athletic performance; and use operating expenses as a comparative indicator of similar institutions regarding their financial efficiency.