Corruption in College Basketball? Evidence of Tanking in Postseason Conference Tournaments

Abstract

This article observes that regular-season champions in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) men’s basketball often perform poorly in season-ending conference tournaments and examines two alternative explanations for this underperformance. We employ data on regular-season champions during the period 1990-2004 to test between competing models of “tanking” motivated by (a) fitness saving for the NCAA tournament and (b) a form of corruption. Our empirical results confirm that systematic under-performance does occur and indicate that corruption is a likely motivation.