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ABSTRACT
College choice has been established a source of administrative concern for colleges and universities, in particular to intercollegiate athletic programs of those universities. Despite the notion that college coaching staffs and facilities are often a primary reason behind securing standout recruits, the final decision on which university to attend and ultimately play for still belongs to the student-athlete. Maslow's (1943) Need Hierarchy theory, as well as college choice models by Hossler and Gallagher (1987), Litten (1982), and Chapman (1981) guided the present study. The purpose of this study was to identify how academic, personal and social factors pertaining to college choice differed among freshmen student-athletes, comparing across gender. Additional analysis was conducted to determine whether athletic factors, primarily television exposure and conference affiliation differed across gender type. More than 200 student-athletes at four regional institutions within the eastern portion of the U.S., completed Gabert, Hale, and Montalvo's (1999) Student-Athlete College Choice Profile Scale. The primary findings of this study suggest student-athletes identified academic reputation, the college head coach, the location of the school, athletic facilities, and athletic traditions as the top five factors that influenced their decision. When comparing across gender, results suggest there are not many differences between male and female student-athletes. Additionally, there were significant differences in means of television exposure when comparing male and female student-athletes.
Keywords: college choice, intercollegiate athletics, student-athletes
INTRODUCTION
Over the last few decades, college athletics has continued to become big business. In terms of financial benefits, many universities see sport as a means to generate millions in revenue from both merchandise and ticket sales (Gaines, 2014; McEvoy, Morse, & Shapiro, 2013). Additionally, there are other university-wide benefits from a strong athletic program such as fundraising revenues, enrollment applications, university prestige and academic quality (Anderson, 2012; Clopton & Finch, 2012; Martinez, Stinson, Kang, & Jubenville, 2010). While the actual success of an institution's sports teams are due to a variety of factors, chief among those would be the recruitment of quality athletes. Despite the idea that college coaching staffs and facilities are the primary reason behind securing standout recruits (Dumond, Lynch, & Platania, 2008; Schneider & Messenger, 2012), the final decision on which university to attend and ultimately play for still belongs to the student-athlete (Seifried,...