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The concept of offering a game in the game has now grown that university athletes can be paid. Nike now, Nike joins some academics for a reality.
By Tania Ganguli
For decades, a small but passionate organization has been presenting a possible balm for the fraught rendezvous between athletics and education at giant universities: allowing academics to be primary in sports.
One such educator is David Hollander, a clinical professor at New York University’s School of Professional Studies. He has spent years espousing the intellectual value of basketball — positionless play, he says, can teach entrepreneurial thinking, and fast breaks can teach interpersonal communication. Mr. Hollander lobbied for the Catholic Church to name a patron saint of basketball (it did) and helped convince the United Nations to declare Dec. 21 World Basketball Day.
Over the next year, in what he sees as a small step on the road to athletics being taken seriously at the Academy, Mr. Hollander plans to teach a course for university, Olympic and athletes in which their reports play and played their game will be component of the curriculum.
“You can get a degree right now in higher education, dance and art and music, drama,” Hollander said. “And I think they are valid titles. These are portals in the human condition. “
He added: “I don’t see how athletics is any different. How that ancient cultural form, like those ancient cultural forms that I’ve mentioned, are not intrinsically academically meritorious.”
Recently, the concepts of educators such as Mr. Hollander have discovered an influential audience: Sports Wear Corporate Nike, which pumps many millions of dollars in school sports through their many sponsorship agreements.
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