This essay explores and examines how rankings and league tables have played (and continue to play) a major and consequential role in how contemporary business schools manage their affairs. It introduces and advances the proposition that rankings promote the short-term manipulation of public reputation (image) projected by business schools at the expense of the long-term investments in quality improvement. When schools shift scarce resources to actions aimed at enhancing their public image in the short-term, the consequences for the quality of the professional education is significantly compromised in the long-term to the detriment of the constituencies that they serve. While this paper focuses mainly on business schools in the United States and Canada, where this author has experienced these consequences first-hand, the effects are similar if perhaps less dramatic, for those professional business programs located in higher education institutions operating in the United Kingdom and Europe. While ranking systems are not going away anytime soon, some potential ways are identified for business schools to escape the deleterious and perverse effects of being captive players in the deadly rankings game.