“A Major Gain for College Sports” is about ways to reduce the negative views of college sports. Sally Jenkins, the author of the article, states ways to reduce to even eliminate the negative stigma around college sports by allowing students to major in sports. Jenkins brings in experts like Michael Oriard, a former Notre Dame and NFL football play to help make her point. She points out that student athletes strive to learn in their respective sports. Also, to be a student athlete requires the same amount of intellect as any other major. She also brings up the point that there is plenty of material to create a course. I believe Sally Jenkins claim of making sports a degree is convincing.
One of the first reasons Jenkins uses is a list of text books that could be used to create a course. Textbooks like “Sports Law: Cases and Materials,” “Combat Sports in the Ancient World,” and “Sports and Public Policy: Social, Political, and Economic Perspectives.” I did not really find this helpful to the case because it seemed to jump to one thing to another without much explanation.
Another reason Jenkins uses to show why sports should be a degree is because athletes like any other people strive to learn. I personally found this one convincing because as a student athlete myself I want to learn as much as i can myself.
With even more reason to make sports a degree is sports require just the same amount a intellect as any other major. Sports do require the same amount of intelligence, but it may not be the same type of intelligence.
The last reason I am going to talk about correlates with the fine arts. We as a society congratulates musicality majors even if they do not make it, telling them that them that they learned something to be proud of.
The form of appeal that Jenkins uses the most is reason. She shows reason through the question “Why is an Alabama football player or Tennessee women’s basketball player less worthy than a Yale drama student?” Another appeal she uses is emotion. She shows this through comparing drama students and student athletes and how the sports are considered tumors and drama is exalted.
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