A Look at a Hypothetical Major in Sports Part II: Freshman Year — Not Quite "A Year of Readiness"

(For Part One of the series, click here.)

While Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany would rather have first year students endure "The Year of Readiness" and be automatically redshirted (and while I lean towards approval of that stance), let's operate under the assumption that all first year students could be immediately eligible.

The first year, and the first semester in particular, should be about the transition and orientation process. The most critical time for any student is during that first semester. Good habits and attitudes need to be established at this point, and the introduction to resources that can aid in that success is crucial.

We will examine the semesters separately. First up is the first semester:

Semester 1:
ENG Composition
MATH
Public Speaking
Introduction to Personal Finance
First Year Seminar

Remember, the fundamentals that need to be addressed for almost any degree you're going to study are English Composition and Math. Ideally, these courses are completed in the first semester. Depending on the institution, Math placement is handled either through SAT or ACT scores or some kind of school-specific placement examination. For our purposes, students will have to meet whatever the minimum math requirement is for the institution. At some schools, it is a "Fundamentals of College Math" survey course; at other schools it may be College Algebra or Precalculus.

For English, again, placement test scores or standardized test scores from ACT or SAT are utilized. In an ideal world, for this example, we are assuming placement into a college level math and English course. If the placement cannot be met for either English or math, then a developmental course will need to be substituted based on institutional policy.

Public speaking is another good fundamental course for all students, but in particular for student athletes. In particular, a good module to build into a course designed primarily for student athletes would be how to engage the media for print, television and radio interviews.

Given the proposed changes to scholarships, stipends, and grant-in-aid for student athletes, a class introducing the ideas and concepts behind personal finance, savings and expenses and other things related to controlling financial resources.

Lastly, a first year seminar course to serve as basically orientation to college. This is, additionally, to make students aware of the resources that are available to them, educate them on institutional policies and expectations, discuss transition issues, study skills, time management and other topics of importance in making the transition from high school to college. This is also a place where athletic departments can make a call about providing additional relevant information to their student athletes; reminding them of institutional and departmental expectations. There are plenty of directions that this can go.

Semester 2:
ENG Composition II/Business Writing
Statistics
Introduction to Marketing
Introduction to Psychology

Second semester builds on the first semester, with either a second English composition course with an emphasis on business writing or business communication. That does break the norm of a second English composition course being a research paper, but in this program, those are not mutually exclusive aims. While students will take public speaking in the first semester, it is also imperative to be able to communicate effectively with the written word—and if the aim is to prepare students for the sports business environment after they are done at their home institution, then a course in business writing only makes proper sense.

As society becomes more data driven, an understanding of numbers and analytics is essential for the modern business marketplace. Hence a statistics course.

Introduction to Marketing to go over the basic principles of marketing from a global perspective. That includes distribution channels, customer relations, communication and pricing policies.

Lastly, the Introduction to Psychology fulfills a general education requirement for a social science and will actually serve as a prerequisite course for a class down the road.