> Sports are part of a traditional old-school liberal arts education.

A traditional, old-school liberal arts education consists of exactly the seven liberal arts, divided into the trivium ([Latin] grammar, logic, and rhetoric) followed by the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, theory of music, and astronomy.)

The slightly less old-school version takes the old trivium deemphasizes formal logic, and adds Greek, history, moral philosophy, and poetry.

I should have been more specific. I was not referring to a European or Renaissance idea of Liberal Arts, but more the 19th century US version that was used as the basis for a large number of American universities especially in the Northeast. Athletics and fitness played a central part in the educational experience there. Once again, that is why Ivy League schools generally have athletics departments that rank among the largest in the nation in terms of number of participants.

We let students major in theater, but not in football. There's a big difference.

> We let students major in theater, but not in football.

Well, we usually don't call it “football” specifically, but “exercise science” or something similar is commonly available. And Baylor has “general studies”, which despite the generic name is intended to support “general career areas of health, fitness, recreation, and sport”, and that's what most of their football players major in.

I’ll also throw out that when I played (D3) football in college, the intellectual load of the sport was higher than in some of my academic classes. We’d spend an hour a day studying film, and on the field we were expected to know understand how our actions would effect multiple other parties in a system.

I still think I got more (intellectually) out of college level football than I did out of intro level sociology.

Given the presumably-larger number of hours I figure you put into football vs. into intro sociology, that hardly seems surprising.

Do you have to be on a team for those majors? Or does it count towards them? If not, I'd say that's still not the same.

> Do you have to be on a team for those majors? Or does it count towards them?

Varsity sports provides letter-graded credits in “classes” available only to student athletes at many colleges and universities, and those credits are generally applicable to general ed requirements for any major to whatever limits generally apply to PE credits, and to major requirements in some related majors, yes.

In fact, Alabama football team members spend far more time doing football-related things — practices, meetings, games, etc. — than any non-athlete devotes to their major subject.

Isn't that more a function of competition than necessity, though? Players who don't put in that time will be benched or cut from the team.

Regardless, I wouldn't exactly call that a virtue. The team members are dumping intense amounts of time into something (while risking literal brain damage) for a tiny chance at a place on an NFL team. Most of those players will leave the university and spend the rest of their lives not making a cent from their sport.

Not saying it's unreasonable to devote time to your passion, without expectation of monetary reward, and if football happens to be it, that's cool. But a university is a place to educate oneself, and it seems a bit sad to me to spend the majority of one's time there not actually doing that, especially when the actual use of time is unlikely to help much for their future outside of school.

Don't get me wrong, I was a varsity student athlete too, but none of that counted towards my major. I think it would be a joke if it had counted as academic work. I went to college to learn and play, separately.

Surely only 20 hours a week, or 8 in the off-season, according to NCAA rules.

Players on Big 5 conference teams spend the night before games in an secure hotel, both at home and on the road. That equals at least 24 hours and in the case of night games perhaps 30 hours devoted to football on game weekends every week during the season.

Add to that travel time to distant cities for road games plus practice and you're closer to averaging 60 hours/week.

Many players practice together unofficially as well both in and out of season.

this is extremely misinformed. there are phisical education and phisical therapy degrees, team sport is essential to character development in children and sport in general done early and constantly is useful to combat a wealth of health related issues including obesity.

sport in school is not an USA anomaly, in Italy the school curriculum basically includes for all obligatory cycles as much hours of physical activity as there are arts and culture hours every week.

the USA anomaly is making a business out of it, but that's just them.

Do you have any evidence to back your assertion that team sport is necessary for childhood character development? How about your implied premise that team sport does a better job of improving physical health than individual sport or non-competive physical activity?

it's self evident if you ever been trough schooling, but since you want to play the evidence game let's start from a systemic study about team sport, socialization and psychological health

https://ijbnpa.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1479-5868-...

If I thought the premise was self-evident, I would not have wasted my time challenging you. The review you cited covers effects of participation in team sport on physical well-being and certain markers of psychological well-being, but you claimed that sport builds character.

Perhaps I assumed a different meaning from the one you intended, but when I hear people going on about sport building character, they're usually talking about their idea of "moral character".

This study does not test, let alone support, the premise that sport builds moral character. Did you mean some other kind of character?

social skills, empathy and understanding rules in social context. I've no idea how morality got into this.

You dragged morality into this when you talked about "character" instead of saying exactly what you meant. :)

Yet football players tend to make more money and find jobs around the sport more often than theater students do in and around the theater.

When you factor in the extremely small percentage of aspiring football players that will actually make it big, coupled with the now extremely clear effects of CTE... I openly ponder: What dollar figure would you require to willingly participate in a repetitive action that is known to cause long term brain damage (and essentially, brain death given CTE)?

Yeah, you might have a better quality of life (money wise) temporarily, but I would argue the horribleness one with CTE experiences at the end of their life outweighs that temporary benefit.

A quick search states about 2% of college football players manage to go pro.

I'm not familiar, but I imagine it's a bit of a cliff for the other 98%? There don't seem to be too many transferable skills from college football if you don't make a living from football.

> I'm not familiar, but I imagine it's a bit of a cliff for the other 98%? There don't seem to be too many transferable skills from college football if you don't make a living from football.

I think football players tend very often to take academic programs relating to communication/journalism, education, or PE/exercise science/etc., and there are certainly some transferable skills from college football itself, along with such programs, to sports journalism, coaching/athletic training, and teaching in secondary school PE programs.

Is there a study or something that backs up your assertion?

Is that true? Do you mean all football players including walk ons?