> The second is that a competitive sports programs can drive a university’s national profile. Two cases in point are the University of Connecticut whose academic profile, endowment and selectivity all improve dramatically as they became a basketball powerhouse, and Gonzaga University a small Jesuit school in Spokane had applications go up more than 300%, academic standards rise and their endowment more than double as they grew into a national basketball powerhouse.

These are still possibly negative sum academic acheivements though, some other universities necessarily dropped in the positional ranking and nearly all diverted more to sports.