Should college football be offered as a major?

Some good discussion material from the New York Times’ Ben Strauss if you’re snowed in here in the Midwest, or about to be snowed in up in the Northeast: Should college football/college basketball be offered as a major?

An excerpt from the pros of it:

He envisions a three-credit seminar in conjunction with an “internship” — a semester on the team. The course could require players to keep logs of what they do each day and write a self-evaluation on career-building skills. “Athletes sometimes don’t realize the value of the skills they’re learning,” Dr. Coplin said. “But employers do.” He argues that their skill set — competitiveness, drive, the ability to work toward a common goal and take responsibility — is particularly valuable in sales and business management. Another idea for the class: an Excel lesson in which a player tracks his performance using trend lines and percentage change.

And the cons:

Given the billions of dollars pumping through the highest levels of college sports and the pressures to win, “football for credit could be ground zero for majoring in eligibility,” said Ramogi Huma, who as president of the College Athletes Players Association helped Northwestern foot-ball players file a successful petition to unionize last year.

Naysayers also note that if you want to make a career in sports, there are already ways to do it.

Give Strauss’ whole story a read, since there are plenty more points in it. But I tend to side more with the con argument above -- yeah, it’d be great if athletes could take courses specifically tailored to football, but it would create plenty of opportunities for dubious eligibility.

If a pre-med student drops below 2.0, nobody’s job could be on the line. But if a star quarterback is on the brink of being ruled ineligible, and ruins his coach’s chances of winning and staying off the hot seat, history has shown that some will devise a way to keep that player on the field. Forming a larger cocoon around athletics could very well foster a worse atmosphere.

Universities and the NCAA, though, could be inclined to look at a football major as a justification to avoid compensating players, so there’s that too. Will this ever become a thing? Probably not, but it’s worth a conversation.