Nocera’s piece is very good until he tacks on the pay-for-play proposal, as an alternative, at the end — and of course that’s what everyone will focus on.
Seems to me that if you’re doing something that you’re ashamed of and therefore lie about, telling the truth about it is not necessarily the right answer.
I can’t come up with an argument against the idea of majoring in a sport. The students should still pass a core curriculum, but why not major in football?
Mr Nocera’s argument breaks down when he starts drawing comparisons to theater and music. A lot of those plays turn up in literature class, or in philosophy, and a lot of those instrumentalists are future teachers. I don’t see any immediate connection between contact sports and physics or pre-engineering.
A lot of players wind up coaching athletics. I don’t see any immediate connection between dance and physics or pre-engineering.
I guess what I am mulling over is this: is excellence in physical, athletic performance worthy of academic respect? If so, should it be approached as an academic discipline?
Shane, in my experience as a professor (exceeding 25 years at a big time football wannabe with pretty good music and theater programs, preceded by seven years at an institution with decent music and no athletic pretensions) I’ve never encountered special counseling or tutoring services or eligibility counselors for music or theater majors, or encountered music or theater majors that required special help for introductory courses.
I was not clear enough in my opening paragraph. Music and theater students take core courses in subjects such as math, philosophy, and literature, and that material sometimes gets into the performances they do, and sometimes the playwright uses high concept philosophy or the like as basis for the plot. (In music, serialism iff integer programming, qed). There’s a better case for treating those endeavors as academic disciplines than there is for turning the sports into academic discipline.
Stephen, I don’t know what credentials will mean here, but I have fifteen years in at a capstone state university with big-time athletics. It also has an excellent program in dance and theater, and a decent school of music. And of course it has the tutoring and other academic help appendages to its athletic program. Know why? Because it can. The athletic program (well, football and basketball) makes enough money to pay not only for all its physical infrastructure and coaching salaries of all sports, including those only viable through Title IX, but for scholarships for the marching band and the dance squads, among others. Then they also give money directly to the academic side (though not enough, in my opinion).
And who gets that special academic help? Not just football and basketball players, but all the scholarship athletes including the smart, Type-A gymnasts and women’s soccer players who routinely show up in my Chemistry 101 course.
I’m still not entirely convinced in my own mind about the argument for treating athletics as an academic discipline, but I am surely not convinced by the argument of your second paragraph. Let’s stipulate that undergraduates with any major should complete a rigorous core curriculum. [In my opinion you shouldn’t be able to graduate from college without passing calculus, but that’s just me. The BA is BS as far as I’m concerned]. What we should recognize is that elite athletes, whether dancers, gymnasts, or defensive backs, are at the very end of the distribution of human ability. Now, is there an academic approach to this physical ability? Surely we are already close with majors like “kinesiology” and “sports management”. So what if the discipline was narrowed to, say, football. There is history and philosophy there, and beauty too, it seems to me.
Shane, I concur in part and dissent in part. College degree with no calculus is no college degree. And I, too, have encountered the ambitious gymnast or runner who shows up in introductory economics (the advanced economics, less so.) On the other hand, our athletic program gets a lot of its revenue from student fees … and the students get sunk costs, they pay the fees but don’t necessarily attend the games. Something else came to my attention … the football coach just got a contract renewal, including some performance bonuses. $10K for a high graduation rate, $10K for a suitable academic performance rate. Don’t know of any such provisions in the contracts for the Maestro or for the theater directors.
Interesting choice of majors you suggest. Kinesiology is close enough to physiology and yet different enough to have academic chops. Sports management … well, I’ve spent enough time around business colleges to sense that there’s not much difference between managing athletic teams and managing other sorts of businesses. But to create special academic disciplines as diplomatic cover for the indentured servitude that is college athletics? I’m not ready to go there.
April 10th, 2012 at 12:48PM
Nocera’s piece is very good until he tacks on the pay-for-play proposal, as an alternative, at the end — and of course that’s what everyone will focus on.
Seems to me that if you’re doing something that you’re ashamed of and therefore lie about, telling the truth about it is not necessarily the right answer.
April 10th, 2012 at 2:00PM
I can’t come up with an argument against the idea of majoring in a sport. The students should still pass a core curriculum, but why not major in football?
April 10th, 2012 at 2:30PM
Mr Nocera’s argument breaks down when he starts drawing comparisons to theater and music. A lot of those plays turn up in literature class, or in philosophy, and a lot of those instrumentalists are future teachers. I don’t see any immediate connection between contact sports and physics or pre-engineering.
April 10th, 2012 at 3:24PM
A lot of players wind up coaching athletics. I don’t see any immediate connection between dance and physics or pre-engineering.
I guess what I am mulling over is this: is excellence in physical, athletic performance worthy of academic respect? If so, should it be approached as an academic discipline?
April 11th, 2012 at 9:22AM
Shane, in my experience as a professor (exceeding 25 years at a big time football wannabe with pretty good music and theater programs, preceded by seven years at an institution with decent music and no athletic pretensions) I’ve never encountered special counseling or tutoring services or eligibility counselors for music or theater majors, or encountered music or theater majors that required special help for introductory courses.
I was not clear enough in my opening paragraph. Music and theater students take core courses in subjects such as math, philosophy, and literature, and that material sometimes gets into the performances they do, and sometimes the playwright uses high concept philosophy or the like as basis for the plot. (In music, serialism iff integer programming, qed). There’s a better case for treating those endeavors as academic disciplines than there is for turning the sports into academic discipline.
April 11th, 2012 at 10:02AM
Stephen, I don’t know what credentials will mean here, but I have fifteen years in at a capstone state university with big-time athletics. It also has an excellent program in dance and theater, and a decent school of music. And of course it has the tutoring and other academic help appendages to its athletic program. Know why? Because it can. The athletic program (well, football and basketball) makes enough money to pay not only for all its physical infrastructure and coaching salaries of all sports, including those only viable through Title IX, but for scholarships for the marching band and the dance squads, among others. Then they also give money directly to the academic side (though not enough, in my opinion).
And who gets that special academic help? Not just football and basketball players, but all the scholarship athletes including the smart, Type-A gymnasts and women’s soccer players who routinely show up in my Chemistry 101 course.
I’m still not entirely convinced in my own mind about the argument for treating athletics as an academic discipline, but I am surely not convinced by the argument of your second paragraph. Let’s stipulate that undergraduates with any major should complete a rigorous core curriculum. [In my opinion you shouldn’t be able to graduate from college without passing calculus, but that’s just me. The BA is BS as far as I’m concerned]. What we should recognize is that elite athletes, whether dancers, gymnasts, or defensive backs, are at the very end of the distribution of human ability. Now, is there an academic approach to this physical ability? Surely we are already close with majors like “kinesiology” and “sports management”. So what if the discipline was narrowed to, say, football. There is history and philosophy there, and beauty too, it seems to me.
April 11th, 2012 at 10:40PM
Shane, I concur in part and dissent in part. College degree with no calculus is no college degree. And I, too, have encountered the ambitious gymnast or runner who shows up in introductory economics (the advanced economics, less so.) On the other hand, our athletic program gets a lot of its revenue from student fees … and the students get sunk costs, they pay the fees but don’t necessarily attend the games. Something else came to my attention … the football coach just got a contract renewal, including some performance bonuses. $10K for a high graduation rate, $10K for a suitable academic performance rate. Don’t know of any such provisions in the contracts for the Maestro or for the theater directors.
Interesting choice of majors you suggest. Kinesiology is close enough to physiology and yet different enough to have academic chops. Sports management … well, I’ve spent enough time around business colleges to sense that there’s not much difference between managing athletic teams and managing other sorts of businesses. But to create special academic disciplines as diplomatic cover for the indentured servitude that is college athletics? I’m not ready to go there.