How to Better Justify Intercollegiate Athletics

How can university and college presidents, and the boards that hire them, better justify the expenditures on intercollegiate athletics, particularly at the Division I level, when

• They are extracurricular activities that have no relation to an academic degree?
• They make completing certain degrees, such as engineering or biochemistry, virtually impossible due to conflicts with practice and game schedules?
• Student athletes miss a substantial amount of class due to competition travel, which is not the case for those who participate in other extracurricular activities, such as club sports, student clubs and Greek life?
• Academic worries are the leading mental health concern for student athletes, perhaps due to how consuming playing a sport is, a commitment that in reality goes well beyond the National Collegiate Athletic Association maximum rule of 20 hours per week?
• At Division I athletic programs in 2022, median expenses exceeded “generated” revenues (not allocated by institutions, states and student fees) by $21.9 million, a gap that has remained relatively steady over the past five years?
• Faculty members are usually expected to make time-consuming accommodations for athletes who miss exams or assignments due to their travel?
• There is little evidence that successful football and basketball programs generate new enrollment at DI institutions?

These long-standing realities of intercollegiate athletics, particularly at the Division I level, have led many informed commentators to defend reforms like eliminating athletics-in-aid scholarships or replacing intercollegiate athletics with club sports. As former University of Michigan president James Duderstadt stated in his Intercollegiate Athletics and the American University (University of Michigan Press, 2000), “the key flaw in intercollegiate athletics as we conduct it today is its independence from and irrelevance to the educational mission and academic values of our universities.”

While traditional performing arts programs like music, dance and drama typically need to be significantly subsidized by universities since they are costly, they lead to an academic degree, the raison d’être of colleges and universities. This is not the case for intercollegiate athletics.

Universities are increasingly losing control over the operation of intercollegiate athletics due to successful and unprecedented legal and political challenges to the NCAA, which is a membership organization. In June 2021, the Supreme Court ruled in NCAA v. Alston that the NCAA cannot bar certain payments to athletes. Facing pressure from state lawmakers, the NCAA enacted rules allowing student athletes to earn income from their names, images and likenesses shortly thereafter, in July 2021.

Earlier this year, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that certain college athletes at private universities should be classified as employees, which was the basis for the Dartmouth College men’s basketball team to become the first college sports team to unionize. Recently, the NCAA agreed to settle a constellation of lawsuits, most notably House v. NCAA. The settlement, which still needs to be approved by a federal judge, would allow athletes who competed before the 2021 rule changes to recoup lost NIL revenue; going forward, it would also permit universities to set aside about $20 million in revenue per year to share with student athletes. And the Johnson v. NCAA case, which seeks to classify athletes as employees, is pending.

While these and future legal cases will decidedly shape the future organization and operation of intercollegiate athletics, universities still have control over the relationship of athletics to the academic mission. In a 2006 publication on the role and value of intercollegiate athletics, former university and NCAA president Myles Brand made the case that athletics were similar in educational value to performance majors like dance and music.

I have extended his argument by describing and defending what would be a first-of-its kind major in the U.S. that would connect intercollegiate athletics to the academic division—a competitive sport major. This interdisciplinary, liberal arts–oriented major would formally recognize the educational value of students’ competitive athletic experiences—in practice, competitions, strength and conditioning, and travel—as a performative component that would be combined and integrated with sports-related coursework.

Here’s one version of a competitive sport major curriculum. The major would be open to any student who participates while enrolled in a competitive-level athletic activity that consists of regular training, qualified coaching and a competition schedule that is sanctioned by an official state or national sporting organization. Examples are NCAA athletes, select club sport athletes and other students who play a sport at a high competitive level while enrolled at the university. Curriculum variations will depend on the institution’s faculty expertise to teach sport-related courses:

• Three years of playing a competitive sport at the college level or equivalent
• Principles of Exercise Physiology
• Nutrition and Metabolism
• Sport Analytics
• Sport Psychology
• Philosophy of Sport
• Managing Sport Enterprises
• Coaching Principles
• Integrative Capstone
• An additional three-course concentration in areas such as strength and conditioning, business management, analytics, or coaching.

Intercollegiate athletics would continue to exist in its current organizational form. The comp sport major would be open to interested student athletes and administered by the academic division, perhaps by an academic department(s) or as an interdisciplinary academic program.

As I’ve argued previously, the intentional integration of sport performance (praxis) and classroom study of sport (theoria) will enhance both types of educational experiences; students’ athletic experiences can illustrate concepts and issues in their coursework, and their coursework can have direct and tangible application to improving their performance and appreciation of their sport. Moreover, students are more likely to find their traditional classroom learning relevant when it is focused on an activity and real-world experience that they care deeply about. There is also the opportunity to bridge the academic-athletic cultures and divide on campuses by formalizing the educational benefits of competitive sport participation as part of an academic degree program.

The following could be the learning objectives and specific learning outcomes of the program. Coaches would establish the outcomes for the competitive sport performance objective—the most essential skills and attitudes that they want to develop in their players. The other objectives and outcomes would be developed by the faculty teaching courses in the program and the program director, with input from interested coaches. The major would go through the typical new academic program approval process as well as the cycle of program review.

A competitive sport major would be distinguished from other existing sport or exercise-related majors due to (1) the liberal arts and interdisciplinary curriculum and (2) the requirement that majors actually perform a competitive sport, as music and dance performance majors do. Unlike the traditional sport pedagogy major, a competitive sport major would uniquely prepare students for coaching positions at highly competitive levels in the vast world of local, state, national and international sport as well as for other types of positions in the sport industry, such as fitness and conditioning, and in sport business.

The major would also prepare students for employers who value the emotional and social intelligence skills gained through competitive sports, such as teamwork, interracial understanding, leadership and emotional self-control. Based on the 2021 American Association of Colleges and Universities report “How College Contributes to Workforce Success: Employer Views on What Matters Most,” the No. 1 skill that employers value is the “ability to work effectively in teams.”

If my experience trying to establish a competitive sport major at my institution is any indication—University of the Pacific has a Division I athletics program without football in the West Coast Conference—there will be resistance to it that has nothing to do with its theoretical coherence and educational value for students. Upper-level administrators objected that the major, unlike other new academic programs, would not bring in net new enrollment since student athletes will come without it. Some faculty objected because the new program would lure majors away from their programs. And with the recent elimination of our sport pedagogy program, there were no full-time faculty to teach some of the required courses. Other institutions might not have these obstacles.

The pending and future legal decisions will definitively change intercollegiate athletics on campus. But one thing university presidents, trustees, academic vice presidents, faculty and athletics administrators can control is moving intercollegiate athletics closer to the center of the academic mission. I don’t know of a better way than establishing an academically rigorous, interdisciplinary and liberal arts–oriented competitive sport major. Dance and music were extracurricular activities at colleges and universities that became core liberal arts majors in the 20th century. It’s time for competitive sports to do the same in the 21st.