Endowment, per School

Football
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What’s the difference between correlation and causation?

While causation and correlation can exist simultaneously, correlation does not imply causation. Causation means action A causes outcome B.

On the other hand, correlation is simply a relationship where action A relates to action B—but one event doesn’t necessarily cause the other event to happen.

Amplitude's blog image-Correlation vs Causation

Understand academic endowment doesn’t cause a a large NIL No causation between 2 variables - size of endowment or size of NIL. In the OPs example, sticking with FBS Div I football only, we are looking for causation agents to variables of endowment size and NIL size. Obviously it’s not sunny weather. So you look for another causation agent. Candidates for pool of causation agents could be large alumni base, alumni base with high participation in donations, etc…

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Even if you stick with I-FBS, as I said, no correlation.

Stanford’s NIL isn’t great despite its super-massive endowment. UT’s NIL, by contrast is as big as its endowment.

SMU and UH have similar sized endowments, but SMU’s NIL is currently a lot better than UH’s due to UH’s lack of sugar daddy oil barons.

Ole Miss had the nation’s #15 recruiting class and raised tens of millions for NIL despite having an endowment less than half that of UH.

Mississippi State signed a higher ranked class than UH or SMU despite only having about 1/3 the endowment of UH or SMU.

So based on that…NO….NIL does NOT correlate in ANY WAY with endowment.

You can have a high endowment and high NIL, a low endowment with high NIL, a high endowment with low NIL, a low endowment with low NIL. and everywhere in between. The two are completely independent of one another and do NOT correlate. Where is this correlation that you hypothesize, in the face of that?

If you or he want to make the case the endowment and NIL correlate, then either you or he need to make that case and prove it.

In light of the evidence to the contrary that I just presented though, that case will no doubt be UNcomvincing.

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So you simply go back and refine the top causing potential agents . Pretty simple stuff but people get tripped up over correlations, causation, strong correlations, weak correlations, inverse correlations , noncausal correlations, multi-variable causation, etc.

Map all 100(done above) FBS I schools and it’s obvious there is a tendency. Will there be an outlier or two, probably, but doesn’t destroy the original premise.

Perfect example. Endowment size doesn’t cause NIL size. NIL size doesn’t cause endowment size. NIL size in this case , has other causation feeds. But that doesn’t destroy a correlation as proposed. And data was already given above.

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Those could also be statistical outliers and one season anomalies though.

Bama, Georgia, Boise State, and Clemson have been recent playoff teams without super high endowments.

ND’s run this year was its first such run in a long time.

So if you want to do some REGRESSION ANALYSIS in order to prove that a correlation such as you claim actually exists, be my guest. But don’t assume that a correlation exists based on what may be a few unusual examples. That appears to be what you are doing.

I can just as easily come up with extreme examples to the contrary, the most notable of which is Stanford’s suckitude in the NIL era despite their super-massive endowment. Same for Rice.

Remember, the burden is on you to prove that case through regression analysis.

Unless and until you do it, you haven’t made the case, and your case fails.

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Stanford has this weird notion that instead of paying millions for a QB the funds would be better spent on nobel prize winners to join their faculty.

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Do you understand what the correlation coefficient is ? You’re arguing it isn’t 1 !
Nobody claims it is. But from data already
presented, it’s obviously not 0 either.

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Then do the calculations and show what the correlation coefficient actually is.

I think that you may find that correlation isn’t as strong as you imagine. No one is saying that it is “zero,” but it’s hardly as decisive or as correlative as you seem to suggest.

I looked at the 247 Top 50 recruiting classes. I do indeed see “high endowment” schools represented on that list…but I see almost as many schools represented that aren’t super high.

Hell, West Virginia’s recruiting class ranked higher than Stanford’s, which barely made the Top 50, despite having BY FAR the largest endowment in FBS, one that is about 38 times higher than WVU’s.

There are several schools with far smaller endowments than UH that ranked way higher on that recruiting list, and that’s likely due to having better NIL despite their endowments. Endowment simply wasn’t a factor in that.

Again…endowment funds are typically used to fund research, fund faculty chairs and pay tenure track professors, pay for scholarships, and perhaps help fund certain aspects of infrastructure. That money mostly goes into investments that generate income for the university to do exactly that.

NIL, by contrast, is a completely SEPARATE pot of monies that isn’t even really related, much less “correlated” to endowments. In many cases, NIL involves direct payments to athletes for their participation in advertising, promotions, endorsements, etc. In the near future, it might literally and openly be “pay for play.” It doesn’t always involve investments to generate money for the school the way that an endowment would, and in the near future, the way things are headed, may simply be a direct handout to a jock from a wealthy fan.

Truly a DIFFERENT animal.

In the end, I am guessing that being in a P2 conference and having a large loyal fan base is FAR MORE “correlative” with NIL power than having a large endowment would be.

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WRONG!
I eat ice cream inside where nobody can see me…

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I remember when Oil and Gas taxes used to be applied to college public education. As as freshman, I paid $4 a credit hour, then we started giving everything back to Oil and Gas and now almost everyone has to go into debt in order to get a college education.

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I went $38K in debt for law school at UH in the mid-90s.

It is what it is.

Paid it off in 2003 after my first wartime deployment.

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I’ll try once more to help you understand. If not, we need to take this up as Private message, per the boards suggestion.

Do you agree the correlation coefficient for
endowment size and NIL size is not ZERO ?

It may not always be 1, but from year one playoff data , the data presented shows it’s not Zero. Actually shows it to be 1! That’s indisputable.

Top of pyramid (C) would be large number of alumni donors. Or call C, in 1927’s terms which I dislike, “high ROI alumni”

Bottom corners would be endowment contributions(A) and NIL contributions(B).

There is no direct relationship between bottom two things and if you understand what is being said, no one has claimed that A causes B or B causes A. But there probably is
a correlation between A and B. When 1 increases , the other increases. That’s all a correlation is. Correlations are everywhere and some seem strange ( skirt hem length and stock market, etc.

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Of course it’s not zero, but that doesn’t make it strong or significant. As you can see by looking at the top 50 recruiting classes, it’s not a particularly strong correlation.

Fan base size (see UT and aTm, and even WVU), and being in a P2 conference are FAR MORE strongly correlative.

And if that doesn’t work…then have a sugar daddy/daddies.

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Stanford hiring Luck is quite interesting. I doubt that Luck was hired just to give his name/smile…

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I think it is related to the idea, not unfounded, that a private university with a large endowment has access to large donor base. Its not like a state school, which generally received its initial endowment from the state via land and minerals (think Texas, UVA, TAMU, Iowa and Penn State), or schools like UH, Bama and UGA, which have gotten money from their representative states throughout the years. As such, IF, and its a big IF, the alumni or say Rice, Stanford, Harvard or Penn, decided to donate to NIL, they can. They just don’t.

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Those last three words are the point.

They don’t, and in all likelihood, they won’t.

UT and aTm fans, OTOH…WILL…and in large numbers. For that matter, so will Ole Miss and MSU fans, despite their schools’ comparatively small endowments.

That’s what makes them NIL powers, as opposed to, let’s say, Stanford or Rice with their large endowments.

NIL is all about either a) having legions of fans that care and pay, OR b) a sugar daddy.

Sadly, Stanford and Rice have neither, regardless of their endowments.

That’s why I say that those two things (endowments and NIL power) are NOT closely related…much less correlated. They are two TOTALLY different and largely unrelated pots of money.

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So, the size of the Houston and Tech endowments as represented in the OP are inaccurate. No?

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Andrew Luck just started in late 2024. Give it some time before anyone comes to a conclusion that Stanford is another riceoroni.

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Well anything can change in the future.

Maybe their sugar daddy will come along.

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If SMU can do it, Stanford can do it x 1000 IF they want to.

They only have to win the ACC

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It’s not a matter of merely “wanting to” from an institutional perspective.

They have to have either a) legions of fans eager to give money that want to, or b) a sugar daddy that wants to.

So far, they have neither. Just like Rice!

UT and aTm have “a” and SMU has “b.”

Stanford and Rice have “none of the above.”

And that has nothing to do with endowment, so don’t make believe that it does, could, or might.

It is what it is.

As I said, hiring a GM won’t do it for them without “a” or “b.”

They need to hope that a sugar daddy comes along. Why? Because I met Stanford alums in my first career, and if they are any indication…then Stanford is NOT going to get the sort alumni/fan support to ever make “a” happen. Also, unlike UH, because of their academic standards, they won’t be able to do much with the TP or JUCOs.

And if this season was any indication…they’ve got A LONG way to go before they contend for an ACC title. Hell, this season, they couldn’t even beat San Jose State and TCU, and went 2-6 in ACC play.

Last season…they lost to friggin’ I-FCS SACRAMENTO STATE at home!!!

They appear well on their way to becoming, as 92010 would say, ricearoni.