Graduation Year

2024

Date of Submission

4-2024

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Computer Science

Reader 1

Mark Huber

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Rights Information

© 2024 Charles Albach

Abstract

DIII sports pride themselves on their more accessible nature, and higher focus on academics. Do these values push the competitive makeup of DIII sports in an egalitarian direction? Using the Herfindahl-Hirschman index and Herfindahl index of competitive balance, this paper seeks to quantify the competitiveness of 26 conferences for DIII women’s soccer. Many conferences in DIII are formed largely through a combination of geographic distance and their public or private school nature. Given public schools often have more equal distribution of tuition fees, will this result in a more equal playing field? Such a relationship has been shown not to exist when it comes to tuition and success in winning DIII championships by Katz, Matthew, et al in their paper “Factors for success in NCAA Division III athletics”, but what about when it comes to the competitiveness within a conference? Ultimately no such relationship between tuition disparity and the Herfindahl index of competitive balance could be quantified using a simple regression model in this paper. Focusing just on the Herfindahl index of competitive balance, this was shown to not have significantly trended in any direction since 2010 for the select conferences.

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