As most baseball and softball fans know, the challenge for many managers is knowing when to replace the starter with someone from the bullpen. In basketball or soccer, it’s subbing in a replacement.
With that in mind, we wondered if college sports, circa 2027, will eventually suffer from what marketing professors call the “Substitution Effect?” That’s the moment customers start replacing, sometimes en masse, traditional purchases with less expensive alternatives.
No one would logically expect that seismic disruption to take place with true blue NCAA fans, the ones who have, for more than 100 years, passionately supported their favorite university and quasi-religiously loved historically successful football, basketball or volleyball teams.
But who on campus today is thinking about the price elasticity of big-dollar private donors, the ones who have started recognizing they’ll have to pony up significant millions every single year to keep key players home or buy expensive new free agents.
There is also the emerging possibility we’ll soon witness a drop in demand from spectators of college sports if ticket prices keep going up and there are multiple cheaper options.
That’s a real possibility in college sports, largely because there is no collective bargaining agreement with the players, no real restrictions on inter-school transfers, no consistency on how long a player can compete in college … and to be honest … no rule that can’t be overruled by way of a temporary restraining order.
Want to start in the NFL and then come back to college? Go for it. Want to tell journalists you’re on State U.’s team but don’t have to take classes (or even go to class)? Announce it on your click-bait social media platform. Not getting enough PT? Transfer tomorrow.
But here’s the rub. At what point will the ticket-buying public revolt? Maybe it won’t happen in 2026, but could it happen in the future? Yeah, very possibly.
The substitution effect acknowledges consumers have choices. You can choose to see a bad football team that didn’t buy a top-notch quarterback and build team depth, or you can go to the State Fair, the movies or out for dinner. You can even stay home and stream Ted Lasso or Slow Horses.
You can read about your favorite 5-12 basketball team that will once again miss the tournament, or you can put the cost of those walk-up tickets, that discretionary money you used to spend on a night out at the arena, toward paying for increased gas, beef and electricity costs.
You see, attending sporting contests ultimately undertakes a value equation tied to entertainment, ambiance, social connectivity and overpriced concessions. When the fan believes there is some parity in the teams participating in a league, that most teams can be competitive all season long, fans willingly suspend belief (their 100% certainty the home team will win) and instead buy into the residual benefits provided by in-person attendance.
This is where the 1976 social psychology research by Robert Cialdini (and his team) generated the concept of Basking in Reflected Glory (or BIRGing). Their research showed that fans strengthen their association with a successful team even though they played no direct role in producing that success.
They found that students were more likely to wear university-identifying clothing following a football victory and, tellingly, were more likely to use the pronoun “we” when describing a win than a loss. Think of familiar expressions such as, “We’re No. 1” or “We’re going to crush them tonight.” The emphasis is on the “we.” Through identification with the team, its success becomes something fans can, at least psychologically, share.
The opposite finding, generally credited to C.R. Snyder, Mary Anne Lassegard and Carol E. Ford in 1986, suggested fans will Cut Off Reflected Failure (CORFing). Where BIRGing involves strengthening our association with success, CORFing involves distancing ourselves from failure.
Applied to sports fans, the language can shift quickly from “We’re No. 1” after a victory to “They stink” or “They don’t know what they’re doing out there” after a loss. Notice what has happened to the pronoun: “We” became “they.” The fans psychologically distanced themselves from the team’s poor performance.
That brings us to the intersection of the substitution effect (where there are plenty of alternative options), price elasticity (increased costs) and CORFing. Environmental realities set to one side, it means the cost of underwriting a competitive team (where the investor has no financial equity and no franchise asset appreciation upside) is suddenly quite high. Likewise for fans, ticket prices (including multi-game season packages) are notably expensive.
This is a long way of saying it’s a tough call financially if your favorite team is going to stink.
Let’s channel Clint Eastwood in the movie Dirty Harry, as if he were a fan talking to an athletic director. Imagine Clint squinting and saying: “You know, in all this NIL excitement and transfer portal poaching, I’ve kind of lost track of things. The costs of staying involved is getting out of hand. Should I keep spending with you? Well, do you feel lucky, friend?” (Note: We made that last part considerably less threatening than the original.)
To be sure, some Power Four and mid-major athletic departments won’t be able to afford the annual $30-70 million lift (for team salaries). On top of that, the most talented players, with their “there-are-no-rules” agents, will continue to prove quite ruthless in shopping young bodies.
There’s also the chance the U.S. government might get involved via the Protect College Sports Act. Then again, with Congress off sipping beach drinks, they may not. They might get a little something on the books when they come back, but certain amendments will almost certainly leave enough loopholes (see also tax law) for nimble schools to thrive and for the poor to go hungry.
There’s one other thing. What happens when athletic directors generate that first big cash windfall, keeping their team competitive for one or two years, but then start realizing they can’t pull the same rabbit out of the hat forever?
Could ADs start to act like players and look for new landing spots before they fail to hit impossibly high financial thresholds? Could they start substituting new schools for the ones where their market and alumni base can no longer keep up?
If that happens, schools will start seeing retention issues and continuity challenges. It could generate market disruption. If so, we should cue up future Allstate home and auto insurance ads (the ones shown during college sports broadcasts) where Mayhem starts causing “accidents” on a few famous campuses. Trust us, Mayhem will laugh at the damage done.
The leadership lesson? Never mistake loyalty for an unlimited resource.
John Cairney is the dean of the School of Kinesiology at the University of Michigan. Rick Burton is Syracuse University’s David Falk Emeritus Professor of Sport Management, co-host of the NIL Clubhouse podcast on Apple and Spotify and co-author of The Rise of Major League Soccer (Lyons Press).
