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Comment by 1cvmask | Hacker News Reader

It’s interesting to see how sports is orphaned in academia in the rest of the world. You either leave school to be a real sports athlete or stay at university and do sports on a more ad hoc intramural level. The sports staff and coaches, if any, make a paltry salary compared to other staff in the university.

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Post-high school football and basketball should be separated from education and run like the farm systems for baseball and hockey (US). Opponents of this idea tend to drag out a "but what about the korfball team?" argument, but I don't think it'd change those sports at that level too much. With any justice the big sports would have been contributing to an endowment for the smaller sports all these years that would be used for a future without stadium sports at the university level.

Or just create like, "football studies" programs.

Pro sports is complicated enough (the business, the history, the game itself) at this point to warrant an undergraduate degree.

I had a similar idea about "basketball studies." There is plenty to fill a curriculum and it's less ridiculous than many programs that exist today.

A big-market sports program is not necessary. Many accredited universities offer sports management and sports marketing degrees, both undergrad and graduate, and most of the ones I just googled are at schools known more for their academics than sports programs.

True, but I mean a program where most of the sports-specific classes are devoted to the playing of the game itself.

You could easily fill half of the non-general credits with topics like strategy, history of the game, general game theory, etc.

If I read between the lines correctly, I'm skeptical that students majoring in sports backoffice do any work at all in the school's own sports programs. Like maybe some interships? Access to some people for research and writing? I'm thinking: not enough to justify keeping them linked, and even so, the teams/sports would still be in the area. My point is that as far as the school is concerned, the potential for any overlap at all is slight. This is proven by the success of backoffice programs at schools with uncompetitive teams.

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