The authors of the piece start out with a mistake: they assume that correlation implies causation, as in “more highly rated players increase attendance”. They even go so far as to say, “For every 4-star recruit on a team, attendance will increase by 710 fans. For every 5-star recruit on a team, attendance will increase by 885 fans.” That’s just silly and a poor use of statistics.

Isn’t is just as likely that strong attendance influences highly rated players to choose a school over others, or more likely still, that both attendance and the number of highly rated players are influenced by all the things that go into a strong program, including good coaches, etc. The authors need to take a statistics class.