Irrational Decision-Making and Herd Behavior: Evidence from the National Football League Head Coach Labor Market

We contribute to the herd behavior and behavioral economics literature by comparing the determinants of head coach candidate interviews and hires with the determinants of successful head coaches. We use National Football League (NFL) data from the 2015 to 2016 through 2021 to 2022 NFL seasons. This results in 435 candidate observations for our Interview and Hired models, as well as 582 head coaches in our Team Win Percentage and Cover Against the Spread models. Our results indicate misalignments between hiring practices and actual determinants of effective coaching. We also suggest that this irrational decision-making is associated with league herd behavior. Overall, NFL head coaches serve as the executive of the team, which allows us to provide insight into herd behavior within the executive labor market in professional sports leagues and traditional for-profit contexts.