There were 20 of us who stumbled into the University Hall media room in the spring of 2001 -- wide-eyed first-years excited to have clinched a spot in hands-down the coolest-sounding USEM. Even the instructor team seemed to suggest that this class would break the mold: An affable assistant athletic director and a perceptive psychology professor tag-teamed their opening speech just as they would collaborate on future lessons.
"Welcome to USEM 171: College Athletics," one of them said, and thus began the most interesting, integrated, relevant academic experience I've had at Virginia.
College Athletics was a USEM to end all USEMs, and not even for those of us who would go on to spend many more hours in the U-Hall press room listening to less academic discussion from Pete Gillen and Debbie Ryan. Looking for interesting work in your favorite subject area? There was something for everyone: the history of college athletics, the economics of Division I sports, the jargon of the NCAA, the impact of the media, the politics that swirl around college sports -- and that's just the first five class meetings.
Tired of big lectures with snooze-worthy discussions? College Athletics met only once a week, two hours at a time, and the class was rarely boring. We had guest speakers from former ACC Commissioner Gene Corrigan to Virginia Athletics Business Operations Manager Keith VanDerBeek to NFL Hall of Famer Howie Long. In groups, we presented some of the most pressing issues around college sports to our classmates and sparked more than one heated debate. Two five to seven page papers were the meat of the coursework, and we were given almost total freedom to write about any of the course topics. My papers on media coverage of women's sports vs. men's sports and the football recruiting game remain two of the best papers I've written in college for one simple reason: I cared.
The relevance of the course was undeniable. Sure, I find the history of Europe from 1890-1950 interesting, but I could open up the newspaper every day and read an article that somehow connected to the myriad issues we had on the table in College Athletics. Few of us were athletes, but everyone was quickly made aware that athletics have a great effect on the University as an institution, the institution that we had committed ourselves to for at least the next three years.
I could go on about the speakers we heard, the eye-opening information we learned about the way college sports work and what fun it was to spend an hour of class time watching basketball practice, but the real point is this: The College Athletics USEM is gone and though not forgotten, I believe it is desperately in need of a resurrection.
You only have to read a few of the hundreds of angry columns that are written every year about the BCS or NCAA or Division I corruption to know that all is not right in the world of college sports. How many times have you heard someone gripe that their tuition is paying for some bum athlete's four-year scholarship, when in fact the U.Va. athletic department operates on an independent budget? And why, if almost every major national newspaper devotes and entire section to the subject, is sport considered unworthy of academic study?
I maintain that there is something missing from our education as American citizens here, a void in the course offering directory that "Tournaments and Athletes" and "Economics of Sports" cannot fill alone.
Granted, it would be difficult to duplicate the experience I had my first year. For one thing, the instructors would have to change: Craig Littlepage has since taken the position of head athletic director, while Prof. Dennis Proffitt teaches cognitive science to undergrads, neuroscience to grad students and runs the Perception Lab. Surely, at a school with 23 Division I varsity sports and the athletic department staff necessary to support them, there are other people who could pick up where Proffitt and Littlepage left off.
Nostalgia for the College Athletics USEM hits me right about midterm time every semester, when I stare in disbelief at the clock in Clemons telling me it's 3 a.m. and wondering why I'm losing desperately-needed beauty sleep over material that I may never use again. I mean no disrespect to traditional disciplines, but I know that sports, for better or for worse, will be a huge part of many of our post-graduate lives. There seems to me no better reason to return a course on sports -- college or professional -- to the options for our education.
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