The past few years the NCAA has endured a great deal of criticism for treating student-athletes as professional athletes without fair compensation. In their defense, advocates point out that many of these athletes receive an education in exchange for their services. Yet, with courses often watered down for student-athletes, the sort of education has become a primary focus. That is, does frequently taking the equivalent of “Rocks for Jocks” in order to receive a degree fulfill the purpose and value of higher education?
A recent New York Times article in the “Education Life” section explored the pros and cons of universities developing a sports-centric curriculum and major. The cons began with the header, “A Needless Accommodation.” The basic argument centered on something like this: A lot of shoddy sports-related classes have existed in the past and so we shouldn’t allow more classes of that discipline at the university level.
The argument seemed lacking, and so I reasoned theoretically as to the benefits of such a major, summarized by the header of the pros section, “An Integrated Approach.” Before embarking on a search for real-life examples, I talked it over with my wife and she responded, “Didn’t you actually do that at Stanford?” As I pondered, nodding, she continued, “And then later in grad school?”
The process of becoming educated can, and should, be intellectually blinding. Thus, Plato’s warning in his famous Allegory of the Cave. Plato compared a student’s education to a lifelong cave-dweller emerging from a dark, comfortable cave into the blinding sunlight. Good teachers, then, don’t force students out of the cave but, instead, as the Latin roots of education suggest, they lead them out.
Any teacher knows acclimating students to this coveted light requires a delicate balance. On the one hand, we don’t want students mindlessly enjoying the proverbial cave where they’re comfortable and ignorant of their ignorance. Yet on the other hand, as any ex-student can attest, if a teacher yanks a pupil into the bright sunlight too abruptly, the pain of the light causes immediate retreat.
At the school where I teach, we employed a term about five years ago as a focal point to help achieve this balance: engagement. Once students become engaged and intrinsically motivated, they willingly, even enthusiastically seek to rush out into the light. Sport can serve as such a catalyst, engaging students to explore areas they might otherwise eschew.
The New England Patriots recently served as such a catalyst, teaching hundreds of thousands of football fans about the Ideal Gas Law (PV=nRT) as fans investigated Deflate-Gate. “Bill Nye the Science Guy” has been making science relevant for years, but it took 11 deflated footballs to get him the national recognition he deserves. I imagine an entire course could be taught using the nuances and tactics of the New England Patriots, especially given how often the suffix “-gate” has followed their name in recent history. Teachers of physics had the opportunity to make the relationship of pressure to temperature accessible and exciting for a whole new cohort of previously disengaged physics students. ESPN has even jumped on board with their multi-Emmy Award winning SportsScience, which explores—and teaches—viewers the science behind vast phenomena in sport.
Stanford University may not be aware they offer the integrated approach of a sports-centric major. So let me share with you—and, ex post facto, with Stanford—how this went down. In doing so, it should bolster my keen defense of a sports major, which was initially based more on theory (i.e. Plato’s Cave, engagement) than practice.
I arrived at Stanford a month before my tenure began as I was a recruited goalkeeper on the water polo team. That month went smoothly and pretty much as planned: prevent the ball from entering the floating rectangle. Though, upon the commencement of actual courses, I struggled a bit to keep up with my freshmen cohort.
I earned a D+ on my first Humanities essay, dropped first quarter Chemistry, and earned a C+ in my Calculus class. I did pass 2 units worth of Varsity Water Polo. The following quarter, the Calculus teacher offered a paper option to replace one of the three exams. Out of his four sections of classes, I was the sole student to take him up on his offer. I worked for two months on this project, getting to know the professor and his assistant quite well (I’m still in touch with them today), and 20 pages later, earned an A on my paper: “A Calculus-Based Analysis of Water Polo Goalkeeping.”
To some very small extent, this investigation helped me as a goalie: It took me two months to discover that the optimal location for a goalie facing a shooter at 7 meters, center-cage is 1.91 meters from the goal line. Basically exactly what my high school coach had told me four years prior. But I actually learned some calculus. And not just the quick-fix, cram for the exam and then forget it style of learning. Much of this big-picture calculus is still with me today.
Once I discovered this sort of engagement, I applied it to numerous future classes. In my Psychology of Perception course I wrote a 15 page paper entitled, “The Neurobiology of Tracking A High Speed Object,” and for the final project in my Kinesiology class I deconstructed every muscle movement involved in blocking a particular shot in water polo, along with a detailed breakdown of the various physical principles at play (Bernoulli’s Principle, etc.). Aside from the actual knowledge of the brain and human body I acquired from these ventures, I was also able to directly apply some of this to my training as a goalkeeper and, presently, as a goalie coach.
This sports-meets-academia approach led to massively increased engagement in my studies. As a result, I raised my GPA to above a 3.5, making me eligible to graduate with Honors in my major, Human Biology, barring completion of an Honors Thesis. So, the summer before my final quarter, I did research at the U.S. Olympic Festival and spent that final quarter writing, completing, and defending my Honors Thesis, “The Psycho-Social Aspects of Goalkeeping.”1
In no way were the numerous sports-inspired papers watered down simply because they employed sports as the primary subject. If anything, I may have been held to a higher standard as I can now imagine Stanford’s elite not wanting some jock to slip through the cracks on their watch. But, in addition, I think my professors agreeably recognized they had an engaged student on their hands, as I frequently visited their office hours and wrote much more extensively than was required by the particular assignment.
I do recall taking Stanford’s version of “Rocks for Jocks” freshman year, before my “engagement” spawned. And, while an “easy A,” I wouldn’t suggest doing away with the entire geology department. That is to say, just because the University of Georgia once offered a course in “Coaching Principles and Strategies of Basketball” which included a final exam with the question, “How many points does a 3-point field goal account for?” this doesn’t mean we should never allow other courses like it. If there is value to be had in a particular major, then we should develop the courses and rigor accordingly. Maybe instead of Georgia’s course, something along the lines of, “Greek Philosophy and Coaching Pedagogy.”
I once took an art class because I thought it, too, would be an easy A. It was not. Looking at paintings was easy. But grasping the history from which the pieces originated, along with the economics of the particular epoch and how the art often mirrored its respective scientific paradigm yet also served as a political (or anti-political) statement was difficult. And fascinating. Thank goodness it wasn’t an easy A (it was a difficult A-).
Sport plays a major role in the ethos and cultural tapestry of society, for better and for worse. Universities have an opportunity to bolster the “for better” by utilizing sport as a catalyst for student engagement. Just as Art History need not produce artists, a sport-related major need not produce athletes nor aspiring sport management professionals. If done well, and rigorously, it would provide an accessible lens with which students could view the world, engaging in life’s most rich and blindingly challenging offerings.
1I went on to earn my graduate degree in philosophy defending a thesis entitled, “An Ethical Analysis of Rules and Violence in Sport.” En route to that, I presented papers in the Philosophy of Sport at conferences throughout the world and published sport philosophy papers in professional journals on topics varying from the ADA’s application to sport to what competitors owe each other.
