There is significant debate about compensation of college athletes in revenue generating sports. In college football, the potential heterogeneity in player value has received little attention in the discussion. The relationship between player quality, team performance, and sport-specific revenue should inform any compensation scheme for college football players. In this article, we provide estimates of player monetary value in college football. This is the first study to exploit player-specific ex ante recruit ratings, team performance, and football-specific revenue and profit (revenue net of expenditures) to infer player valuations. This allows us to estimate value for players whose performance can be difficult to measure given traditional sport metrics. We use a unique data set which records individual recruits by ex ante star rating annually for every Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) school and combine that data with data on team performance, bowl appearances by type, and football-specific revenue. Using a valuation approach which links player-specific quality to team performance and subsequently to revenue, we infer the value of recruits by their ex ante recruit rating. We estimate that five-star recruits increase annual revenue by US$650,000, four-star recruits increase revenue by roughly US$350,000, and three-star recruits increase revenue by US$150,000. Two-star recruits, however, are negatively related to revenue and profit, with two-star athletes reducing annual revenue by US$13,000. Overall, our results imply that player valuations are heterogeneous and that ex ante ratings of player quality are strongly related to school-specific football revenue and profit and may be predictive measures in a compensation scheme.

中文翻译：

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高校足球招生单位人均收入

关于大学运动员在创收运动中的报酬存在重大争论。在大学橄榄球中，球员价值的潜在异质性在讨论中很少受到关注。球员素质，球队绩效和特定于运动的收入之间的关系应告知大学橄榄球运动员的任何补偿方案。在本文中，我们提供了大学橄榄球运动员金钱价值的估算。这是第一项利用球员特定的事前评分，球队表现以及足球特定的收益和利润（收入减去支出）来推断球员价值的研究。这使我们能够为那些在传统运动指标下难以衡量的球员估算价值。我们使用一个独特的数据集，该数据集每年按每个足球碗分区（FBS）学校的事前星级记录来记录新兵，并将这些数据与团队绩效，按类型分类的碗出场和特定于足球的收入相结合。通过使用一种评估方法，该方法将特定于球员的素质与团队绩效以及随后的收入联系起来，我们通过事前评估来推算新兵的价值。我们估计，五星级新兵的年收入将增加65万美元，四星级新兵的年收入将增加约35万美元，三星级新兵的年收入将增加15万美元。但是，两星级运动员的收入和利润成反比，两星级运动员的年收入减少了13,000美元。总体，