Have you ever thought about what you might study in college? Engineering? Business? Communications? Political science?
How about sports?
In “What’s Your Major? Some Say ‘Sports’ Should Be an Acceptable Answer,” Tania Ganguli writes that the idea of offering a degree in sports is gaining momentum — with even Nike, the sports apparel giant, joining some academics in pushing for it to become a reality:
For decades, a small but passionate group of academics has offered a potential balm for the fraught relationship between athletics and education at major universities: Allow students to major in sports.
One such educator is David Hollander, a clinical professor at New York University’s School of Professional Studies. He has spent years espousing the intellectual value of basketball — positionless play, he says, can teach entrepreneurial thinking, and fast breaks can teach interpersonal communication. Mr. Hollander lobbied for the Catholic Church to name a patron saint of basketball (it did) and helped convince the United Nations to declare Dec. 21 World Basketball Day.
Within the next year, in what he sees as a small step in the road toward athletics being taken seriously in the academy, Mr. Hollander is planning to teach a course for varsity, Olympic and professional athletes in which their experiences playing and practicing their sport will be part of the curriculum.
“You can get a degree right now in higher education, in dance and art and music, drama,” Mr. Hollander said. “And I think those are totally valid degrees. They’re portals into the human condition.”
He added: “I don’t see how athletics is any different. How that ancient cultural form, like those ancient cultural forms that I’ve mentioned, are not intrinsically academically meritorious.”
The article continues:
Recently, the ideas of educators like Mr. Hollander found a notably influential audience: the sports apparel company Nike, which pumps hundreds of millions of dollars into college sports through its numerous sponsorship agreements.
Nike wants to lobby universities to offer minors or majors in athletics. Students would earn credits for time spent working on their sport (in other words, practicing and playing it) and also for taking classes in a more theoretical curriculum that helps them understand the social, cultural, anthropological and physiological elements of athletics.
Some models suggest the major could include sport-specific strategy courses, along with courses in nutrition, performance psychology and physiology. It is an idea that has gained momentum in an era when athletes are now able to be compensated for their name, image and likeness, or N.I.L., which allows some of the most popular student athletes to be paid as much or more than some professionals.
“We think that there’s enough interest from the colleges that Nike works with to be able to make this happen,” said John Jowers, vice president of communications at Nike.
However, the idea of a sports major is not without its critics:
Mr. Tublitz, the emeritus biology professor at Oregon, who was the president of the university senate, said that most of the athletes who took his courses were excellent students, but he did not think sports satisfied universities’ goals of “critical thinking skills and improving oral and written expression.”
He added: “One argument for this type of major is that sports, and the competitive sports specifically, contribute to the formation of a holistic integrated person. Makes persons more mature. And that’s true. But so does traveling. So does reading. So does gardening, cooking.”
Mr. Tublitz thinks the amount of money involved in college sports makes it difficult to compare to subjects like dance or theater. If a dancer misses a performance because they become ineligible because of poor grades, that doesn’t affect a university’s bottom line in the way it could if a star football player misses games.
John Davidson, a professor of Germanic language and film studies at The Ohio State University and the school’s faculty athletics representative, said he worried about conflicts of interest if coaches were allowed to weigh in on their players’ grades. Those coaches would have an incentive to have the athletes pass courses so that they maintained eligibility, whether their work deserved it or not.
Students, read the entire article and then tell us:
Should colleges and universities allow students to major in sports? Why or why not?
What major do you think you might want to pursue in college? Would you be interested in a degree in sports if it were offered?
What’s your reaction to the push for a sports major now that student athletes can be compensated for their name, image and likeness? What do you think of Nike’s role in the efforts? How would a sports degree positively or negatively affect schools and student athletes?
David Hollander, a clinical professor at New York University’s School of Professional Studies, points out that students can get college degrees in dance, art, music and drama and argues that we should see athletics in the same ways, as “portals into the human condition.” Do you agree? Should higher education take the study of sports more seriously? What do you think is the academic and intellectual value of studying sports in college?
Skeptics like Nathan Tublitz, an emeritus professor of biology at the University of Oregon, believe that a sports major is being proposed “to rationalize and justify the time on the field” and that it “wouldn’t be as intellectually rigorous as any other academic subject.” What do you see as the downsides of a possible sports major?
What do you think will be the outcome of these debates? Will sports become a college major in the near future?
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.
Find more Student Opinion questions here. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate these prompts into your classroom.
