Do Sports Crowd Out Books? The Impact of Intercollegiate Athletic Participation on Grades

We investigate the influence of intercollegiate athletic participation on grades using data from the U.S. Naval Academy. Athletic participation is an endogenous decision with respect to educational outcomes. To identify a causal effect, we develop an instrument via the Academy’s random assignment of students into peer groups. Instrumental variable (IVs) estimates suggest that sports participation modestly reduces recruited athletes’ grades. This finding has implications beyond college, as we also show that grades—not athletic participation—are most strongly associated with postcollegiate outcomes such as military tenure and promotion rates