Conflicts of interest distort public evaluations: Evidence from NCAA football coaches

This paper investigates how private incentives distort public evaluations. Exploiting a unique empirical setting, we study the influence of conflicts of interest among NCAA football coaches participating in the USA Today Coaches Poll of the top 25 teams from 2005 to 2010. The research design takes advantage of a situation where many agents are evaluating the same thing, private incentives are clearly defined and measurable, and there exists an alternative source of computer rankings that is bias free. We find evidence that coaches distort their rankings to reflect their own financial and reputational interests. Most importantly, we find that coaches show more favoritism toward their own team when they stand to gain more financially and toward other teams when it generates higher direct financial payoffs for their own university. Additionally, coaches boost the ranking of their own team and teams from their same athletic conference, even after accounting for direct financial incentives. Coaches also rank teams they defeated more favorably, thereby making their own team look better.