College sports have shifted recently, with athletes now being able to be compensated for their name, image, and likeness. Now that some student-athletes can make a professional salary from their sports career, some have argued that colleges should add a new major: Sports.
The idea came from David Hollander, a professor at NYU whose love for basketball isn’t difficult to see; he both lobbied for the Catholic Church to name a Patron Saint of Basketball and convinced the UN to name a World Basketball Day. He and other sports-loving college professors think that athletics is just as valid of a major as theater or music. They argue that different styles of play, like fast breaks and team defense, can teach critical thinking skills.
Despite this idea’s small and strong fanbase, sports-focused majors already exist. If someone is planning on following a career based solely on sports, they can major in Kinesiology or Sports Business/Management. While these two do not incorporate play concepts and skills from sports, they still provide an education that delves further into sports and exercise. Student athletes can have an education that reflects their experience and builds on concepts they learn in practice, without changing the structure of college athletics where coaches evaluate athletes.
Hollander and others have been pushing for this idea for years now, but it only recently became mainstream. Elliot Hill, the new chief executive of Nike, started to show support for the idea as an effort to revive business. In December, Nike made claims that they want to return to a focus on sports rather than lifestyle apparel. Their step back towards sports accompanied their new support for the major.
Faculty have resisted the idea though, claiming that the major was less valid than other majors, including fine arts or performing degrees. Their resistance, however, might be based on the stereotype that athletes are dumber or less academic than others. One faculty member even said that the difference between a sports major and a music major was that they could “have an intelligent conversation with one and [not] with the other.”
On top of their initial resistance, individual professors have raised other concerns. For example, in many models for sports majors, coaches have a hand in their players’ grades. This could cause a conflict of interest, because players’ eligibility often rests on their grades. Coaches, then, could give their players better scores than deserved, in order to ensure top players play, allowing them to win more games. Some argue that if a player did major in their sport, on top of daily practice and in-season games, it would provide a narrow education and overall college experience. Many, if not all athletes aren’t single-minded; they have other interests, which they can and should explore. College is an opportunity to take classes that pique your interest and develop your understanding of new topics, even for those who don’t know what they’d like to learn about.
For me, this question is closely related to another, one that many college athletes ask themselves before committing. How would a season or career-ending injury impact this decision? For prospective athletes, this usually concerns whether they enjoy the college as a whole, or just the sports team. In this case, however, it concerns the athletes lives at large. It would be determined by whether they could participate in a major that was dependent on physical activity post-injury, or appreciate having a degree specific to an industry that they had hoped to play in.
Being a professional athlete can be a fickle job, and one of the merits of college sports is the education that accompanies it. Athletes can prepare for a world outside of sports, learn new skills, and develop old skills that they learned on the field. Athletes’ ability to earn name, image, and likeness matter and the increasing popularity of smaller sports certainly have their merits, but it is important that we work towards supporting our student athletes in their educational pursuits, rather than only amplifying their efforts to improve their athletic skill.
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