How do university and college faculty, departments, curriculum committees, and academic administrators determine what is a bona fide “academic” course or “academic” major? To be sure, there are practical and administrative considerations that are often necessary to justify the approval of new majors, such as student demand, program cost, and employability after graduation. However, what are the intellectual criteria to recognize a novel degree program as a legitimate academic one? For traditionalists, academic areas of study must primarily involve cognitive skills and intellectual ways of knowing while disciplines focused on physical movement are often excluded. We argue that performance in a competitive sport is an additional avenue for valuable educational outcomes.
Histories of U.S. higher education curricula such as Frederic Rudolph’s The American College & University: A History (1962) and Laurence R. Veysey’s The Emergence of the American University (1965) reveal that the nature or essence of what is academic has never been fixed and has historically been influenced by economic, cultural, and political needs. For example, in the 17th and 18th centuries when many U.S. colleges were founded, English was not an academic area of study, only Greek and Latin. After the U.S. Civil War, land grant institutions established new practical-oriented professional programs like agriculture and engineering, and other new academic disciplines came into existence, like English, government, history, economics, and psychology, to give students the knowledge and practical skills to work in the expanding economy and to be citizen leaders in the democratic republic (National Education Association, 2022). It was not until the 20th century that current core liberal arts fields such as music, theatre, and dance were established. Later that same century, new kinds of academic knowledge and skills were recognized as essential, such as intercultural understanding, global knowledge and environmental awareness and new majors were created to address these areas of inquiry. And in the first part of the 21st century, the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) formulated a set of essential undergraduate learning outcomes for our current time to enable shared vision around liberal and general education (2025). Among the traditional academic areas and intellectual skills of critical thinking, written and oral communication, and quantitative literacy are teamwork, ethical reasoning, intercultural understanding, and applied learning.
Nonetheless, despite the eventual addition of new areas of inquiry and majors that primarily involve physical movement—such as physical education, kinesiology, and dance—higher education has not considered competitive athletics as an academic major until fall 2025 when Southern Virginia University became the first institution to establish a Sport Performance major, as reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education. The establishment of a Sports Performance major recognizes the different kinds of learning that take place in competitive sports, an omission that has been to the detriment of student-athletes.
Critical to a consideration of athletics as academic discipline is an analysis of its similarities to other established academic disciplines. Engaging in sport is, in many ways, akin to immersing oneself in the performing arts (Brand, 2006; Matz, 2020, 2022). Both require applying theoretical content to a performative activity that becomes skilled with extensive repetitive practice and constant critical feedback from a coach. Both cultivate character virtues and emotional and social intelligences that are difficult to develop in a traditional classroom, such as discipline, controlling one’s emotions under pressure, being open to regular critical feedback, teamwork and leadership, intercultural understanding, and persisting through injury and other obstacles. Both require a seamless integration of body and mind. And just as a dancer perfects their movement or a beginning pianist practices a rounded finger shape, the athlete engages in specific drills to improve agility, speed, and mastery of specific movements. In both cases, the performing artist and athlete apply learning science as they move from conscious competence to unconscious competence to perform at a proficient level (Ambrose, et al., 2010).
Practicalities of a Sports Performance Major
While there can be institutional variation based on faculty capabilities, a sport performance major would usually consist of 2-3 years of competitive sport participation at the university or equivalent level, a liberal-arts oriented curriculum of sport-related courses, and a concentration. For the participation or playing component, athletes would enroll in an activity course, and coaches or other instructors of record evaluate achievement on the learning outcomes since they are the trained practitioners. Coaches remain staff and fulfill their contractual obligations of skill and student development. At many institutions across the country, athletes already receive academic credit (usually one unit) for their sport participation (Weight & Huml, 2016), and coaches give pass-no pass grades. Like music ensembles and individual lessons, the sport participation course contains team and individual practices that are overseen by a qualified practitioner. And unlike physical activity courses for the general student population, the sport participation or performance courses require far more contact time per week (per NCAA regulations, participation is supposed to be limited to twenty hours per week but de facto far exceeds this limit), are executed at a far higher skill level, and require public performances.
While the coursework of a Sport Performance major will differ from institution to institution based on the interests and competency of the faculty, the curriculum will contain required core courses and elective options or elective options within a defined category. Typical courses could include kinesiology (such as exercise physiology, nutrition, and/or motor learning), sport analytics, psychology of sport, philosophy of sport, a course in the history or sociology of sport, and perhaps courses in leadership, coaching, and/or sport management. To improve employability, students would choose a concentration of 2-3 courses in areas that are offered at one’s institution, such as exercise science, sport or data analytics, sport communication, or coaching and leadership.
The curriculum is differentiated from other sport-related majors like kinesiology/sport science and sport management in the following ways:
(1) It is a requirement to participate in a competitive sport while completing the major.
(2) The curriculum is strongly oriented in the liberal arts. The curricula in kinesiology and health exercise science programs—which usually prepare students for occupations like athletic training, occupational therapy, and physical therapy—are largely science-based, and the curricula in sport management programs is business-oriented.
(3) Because of the unique performative requirement, the major is situated to holistically develop emotional and social intelligence skills in students in ways that go beyond traditional classroom learning. These attributes include but are not limited to emotional self-control, managing disappointment, productive teamwork, and cross-cultural understanding.
Student Demand and Connections to Career Outcomes
There is evidence for strong student-athlete demand for the major. In 2025, a Student-Athlete Insight’s NIL Research Poll was conducted of 5,000 university/college athletes (60% DI, 25% DII, and 15% DIII) and 1,000 high school athletes who want to play at the university level. With 1,000 completed responses, the survey showed that 78.8% of respondents ‘strongly agreed’ and 11.9% ‘somewhat agree’ that they were interested in a Sports major or minor that would include athletic participation as class time for credit. In 2020, University of the Pacific conducted a survey of its NCAA athletes and three club sport teams. The survey described a sport performance major curriculum and asked athletes whether they would have majored in it. With a 45% response rate, the survey showed that 40% of the athletes would have chosen the major, and the majority of those who were neutral or would not have done the major nonetheless thought it should be created. Many students remarked that their current major, such as sport management, exercise science or psychology, was a default one. These survey results can be found in the Sport Major Collective repository. Additionally, research in the Journal of Athlete Development and Experience by Bowling Green State University professor Amanda L. Paule-Koba of 605 student athletes across the BIG 10 and MAC conferences shows that student athletes’ conceptualization of a default major means that their majors and career aspirations are misaligned in nearly a third of student respondents (Paule-Koba, 2019). Better matches between student aspiration and academic pursuits are clearly needed.
When athletic performance is perceived as mere physical activity, we overlook the fact that student athlete training and performance exhibit those aforementioned virtues and intelligences that are directly transferable to the workplace and highly valued in the professional world (National Association of Colleges & Employers, 2025; Trogden & Walker-Donnelly, 2023). Multiple reports and organizations highlight the immediate employability of student athletes across sectors and the long-term career success that former student athletes achieve in executive and C-suite roles (Weight & Harry, 2025). An integration of athletics into the academic curriculum not only enhances the educational experience but also prepares students for the demands of the modern workplace. Employers seek individuals with demonstrated expertise and who can bring such qualities to their organizations.
Addressing Academic Bias or Perception
Why have competitive sports been left out of academic domains? In actuality, students who play competitive sports at the NCAA, NAIA and the NJCAA often receive academic credit for participation at many institutions. Nonetheless, these “activity” units are often considered elective courses and remain on the educational periphery separate from any degree requirement.
A survey of the literature does not reveal any studies explaining why competitive sports have not been formalized into a performance major like dance or music. Some have speculated, like the former NCAA president Myles Brand, that there has been a bias in the academy against physical skills, including vocational ones (2006). He posits that performing arts like dance and music are legitimized academic disciplines because they are considered to be high-brow activities whose skills are more cultured and refined than sporting ones. The academic bias against sports might simply be a class bias.
Certainly, the educational value of competitive athletics has been undermined by many factors. There is the amount of missed instruction time due to competition travel and to the amount of time spent out of class playing a sport. There have been high profile academic scandals (Kuhn & Rubin, 2022) regarding recruiting unqualified students and leading students into fraudulent courses to maintain eligibility. There is now a substantial influx or demand of money for student-athletes due to recent court cases, like Alston v NCAA and House v NCAA. Nonetheless, these problems with the institutional aspects of intercollegiate sports should not let us lose focus on the educational value of sporting activity and the opportunity to formalize it into a rigorous academic major.
Takeaways for Academic Deans and Other Leaders
At its heart, sports as academic discipline is an option that can advance students’ educational and career goals while upholding academic values and academic rigor. Many institutions are developing sport-related courses, credentials and programs that connect to their institutional missions, visions, and values (Weight & Harry, 2025). While Southern Virginia University became the first institution to establish a sports performance major, at least one other institution is working a sports performance major through shared faculty governance. The work of academic leaders is paramount to balance creativity and innovation with caution and academic quality control. We have outlined several ideas for deans and other leaders to consider in analyzing their academic offerings to develop sport-focused curricula:
- Treat playing time like an internship. Any internship should have a structure and an instructor of record who creates the syllabus and ensures timelines, learning goals, and deliverables are being addressed. Students do not receive credit for the activity itself, rather, the credit is awarded based upon demonstration of learning and personal advancement.
- Create new majors where “Performance” is a large component of the major field of study, integrated with classroom-based learning. The learning in the performance courses could involve portfolios that demonstrate academic content mastery, crossing known fields such as biomechanics, physics, art, nutrition/applied biochemistry, data science, and ethical use of technology. Assignments could involve reflections or video demonstrations of both theory and practice in embodied learning.
- Administratively house sport performance with other performance arts programs to take advantage of synergies between sports performance and the arts. Performing arts departments already have the infrastructure for individual “lessons” and team-based ensembles or companies. They already have the infrastructure for faculty adjunct appointments or clinical faculty appointments. A conservatory model of the arts aligns well with an applied and focused study of sports performance. Alternatively, a sports performance major could be housed in a specific department (like kinesiology or health sciences) or as a stand-alone interdisciplinary program.
- Use your pre-existing academic infrastructure. For institutions that have the ability to stack credentials into a major, consider how sports performance could align with existing certificates or other credentials. Students could achieve appropriate academic discovery through focused or themed areas relating to their goals. For institutions that offer individualized or self-designed majors, consider piloting sports performance as a major or minor within this administrative structure. Student athletes could identify how specific courses meet their interdisciplinary learning goals and build majors or minors with faculty or staff guidance to provide depth and breadth across the field.
To broaden the playing field of conventional academic disciplines is to consider all that the study of athletics as experienced by college student athletes has to offer. With sport, the spectrum of intelligences deemed academic becomes more inclusive when physical movement is valued alongside oration, writing, and mathematical calculation. By recognizing the educational value of sport, we honor the depth, rigor, and creative intelligences inherent in human movement and performance.
References
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AAC&U. (2025). What Is Liberal Education? https://www.aacu.org/trending-topics/what-is-liberal-education
Brand, M. (2006). The Role and Value of Intercollegiate Athletics in Universities. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, 33(1), 9–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/00948705.2006.9714687
Kuhn, A.P., Rubin, L.M. (2022). Are college athletes cheaters? What do faculty think? Journal of Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics, 15 (1). https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/jiia/vol15/iss1/7
Matz, L. (2020). Turning intercollegiate athletics into a performance major like music. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, 47 (2).
Matz, L. (2022). Sports major: Competitive performance as a liberal art. Liberal Education. Spring 2022.
Matz, L. (2024). How to better justify intercollegiate athletics. Inside Higher Education. August 1.
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https://www.nea.org/resource-library/land-grant-university-research
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Trogden, B.G., Walker-Donnelly, K. (2023). Enough with the “soft skills” already! Let’s embrace the “both/and.” The ACAD Leader. https://acad.org/resource/enough-with-the-soft-skills-already-lets-embrace-the-both-and/
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Weight, E. A., & Harry, M. (2025). Reimagining College Sport in an Era of Transformation: A Narrative Literature Review Scholarship & Examples of Sport-Centric Curricula within Higher Education. Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics. https://www.knightcommission.org/commission-research-white-papers/
