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The concept of offering a degree in game has grown now that university athletes can be paid. Nike now, Nike joins some academics for it to a reality.
By Ganguli Tania
For decades, a small but passionate organization of presenting a possible balm for the tense appointment between athletics and education in giant universities: allow academics to be primary in sports.
One of those educators is David Hollander, a clinical professor at the School of Professional Studies at New York University. He spent years defending the high direction of basketball, the game without position, he says, can teach business thinking, and rapid breaks can teach interpersonal communication. Hollander pressed for the Catholic Church to call a Basketball Patron (did it) and helped convince the United Nations to claim World Basketball Day on December 21.
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 do not see how athletics is different. How this ancient cultural form, like those ancient cultural bureaucracy that I mentioned, are not inherently academically meritorious”?
Recently, the concepts of educators such as Mr. Hollander have discovered an audience, in particular the influence: Nike sportswear, which pumps many millions of dollars in university sports thanks to their many sponsorship agreements.
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