The marriage of spectator sports and higher education is, of course, a historical accident. It is unlikely that a blue-ribbon panel working today to establish a national system of research universities would include on its list of functions for institutions providing mass entertainment in the form of college football.

But universities have just that — and they employ it in quite direct ways to advance the resource acquisition that serves various broader institutional agendas, including the purely academic ones that all agree are legitimate and significant. Football has proven particularly useful to universities in fostering the effective external relations that attracts resources to campus, resources that not only allow universities to maintain, but also to build. It also contributes in important ways to advancing the campus community and collegiate atmosphere that is expected of all institutions, including large universities.

As we begin another college football season, here are four strategic advantages that football provides to the university. Such a discussion does not need to reach important questions of the "mechanics" of college football, with its associated allegations of commercialism and professionalism — and even corruption and exploitation — but is necessary to inform it.

• Collegiate Ideal and Institutional Culture. In the inexorably linked quest for prestige and appeal for resources that drives strategy at universities, it is not enough to be perceived as particularly successful in research, effective in teaching or even relevant through public service. Large universities also must incorporate the collegiate atmosphere originally associated with small colleges — an aura that universities continued to embrace as they evolved from colleges at the turn of the last century.

At large universities, football enables the expression of the collegiate ideal, albeit imperfectly, providing the markers of the distinctive institutional culture and robust campus community that can be difficult to otherwise achieve on large campuses. It gives form to the norms, values and beliefs that define the unique culture of any institution through the repeated expression of shared symbols, language, narratives and practices. In doing so, football makes organizational culture more understandable and accessible.

Through football, the university community can display its culture in tangible and unique forms — its colors, logos and mascots (symbols); songs and slogans (language); stories, legends and myths (narratives); and rituals and ceremonies (practices). Universities can thus demonstrate how they differ from other institutions in ways that are appealing and accessible to those associated with them, highlighting qualities at the core of the collegiate ideal, such as intimate community. Once again, this is not the result of planning but instead universities using available — and needed — opportunities to their advantage.

• National Brand and Legitimacy. In addition, football provides institutions that are essentially local in their reach with what amounts to a national brand, adding distinctiveness and importance to campuses with few other areas of real national prominence. Not by choice, of course, it is far more likely a university will be noted as nationally prominent for its football team than for its English department, law school or biochemistry research.

Spectator sports (along with geography) are what distinguish otherwise indistinguishable large universities (and otherwise indistinguishable states) on a national level. When teams are successful or even simply appealing, football is the source of national presence for large institutions — standing that comes in few other forms, if any, at all but a few institutions. Such notice lends legitimacy to a campus. Even though linking football and institutional status may be misplaced, it still matters greatly, particularly as lending credibility as institutions seek resources from increasingly skeptical local sources.

• Local Involvement and Accessibility. Football also is accessible (and even relevant) to broad audiences, particularly in ways that many activities are not (say, research in the humanities). It is what many outsiders know and like about an institution, making insiders out of local communities that extend statewide, who become passionate advocates for and supporters of "their" university on the basis of identification with "their" teams. Much the same can be said of the legislators who appropriate state revenue on behalf of their constituents.

Football provides a locus for the expression of the pride of place that is so central in the American culture, serving as a cultural touchstone for supporters and affording a meaningful point of connection for the local constituents who provide financial support to universities. In fact, football may even provide a distraction from activities that can be difficult to justify as directly relevant to the economic advancement of a state. Institutions build on such connections, quite purposefully, in external relations.

Football also provides a vehicle to literally (and figuratively) bring people onto campus. These might be prospective major donors or key legislators invited to the president’s box at the stadium or regular annual fund donors or tuition-paying parents sitting in the stands or watching with interest on television — those who otherwise would not have a direct means of connection to the institutions that become a source of pride and even passion for them.

• Institutional Identification and Brand Equity. Finally, universities underscore their unique cultures mindful of a purpose — to encourage identification with the institution among constituents. Football allows a community to relate to something that they perceive to be distinctive, central and enduring, causing them to want to deepen and announce their affiliation.

Football also provides institutions with names and symbols that have special mystiques to differentiate them from "the pack." The value that comes with these is termed brand equity — the payoff for developing a strong brand. Through a mix of information and aura, strong brands communicate quickly what the organization wants people to know about it and its products, doing so in ways that these messages will be remembered when needed.

Through the institutional identification and brand equity fostered by football, institutional culture thus has uses, causing constituents to think of a given institution as "their" institution — one they want to support in tangible and intangible ways.

Resource acquisition through effective external relations is what enables the aspirations of essentially local institutions to national standing. Football provides the tools needed in this task — a tangible means to express institutional culture and giving form to the collegiate ideal, attaching a national brand to essentially local institutions, making universities accessible to the local communities who become involved with and thus want to support them, and encouraging the institutional identification and brand equity that is so valuable in realizing strategic goals and institutional aspirations.