Remembering the (College Football) Titans: Integrating College Football in the South.

The article examines the integration of college football teams in the American South during the 1960s and 1970s through the lens of Becker's model of discrimination, which predicts that firms (teams) that discriminate suffer lower profitability (winning percentages) and may choose to integrate to improve performance. Using data from major Southern college football programs, the study finds that worse-performing teams, measured by winning percentage and Associated Press rankings, tended to integrate their football teams earlier than better-performing teams. The analysis employs Cox and Weibull hazard models controlling for factors such as state demographics and institutional characteristics, providing robust evidence that lower-performing teams exited segregation sooner. This research contributes to the literature on racial integration in sports by focusing on a highly segregated region and an amateur sport, highlighting economic incentives behind integration decisions in a historically significant context.