Leverage over Life Outcomes: Measuring Agency among College Quarterbacks

Abstract

The sociological literature has produced a litany of definitions for agency. These ideas are diverse, hotly debated, and have become increasingly elaborate as theorists have attempted to reconcile often incompatible concepts. This theoretical morass has made it difficult for scholars to conduct research related to agency, namely to investigate the impact of key life choices on key life outcomes. In this paper, I present a framework to untie this particular knot, establishing the concept of “leverage,” a measure of how much difference a particular actor’s choices make on an outcome in the social world. Using high quality data from college football, I conduct a study on the impact players’ choice of college program has on their eventual probability of being drafted into the NFL. I show that leverage is distributed heterogeneously across the population of highly recruited quarterbacks, and I present strong evidence that the “middle class” of talented but non-elite players have the most leverage over their desired outcome in this case. I discuss the implications of these findings for sociological thinking about agency in general, and suggest social milieux where research into leverage may be relevant.