OT: NY Times Article on "How We Play the Game" with UM Professor discussing Germany

Submitted by sadeto on

The NY Times had an interactive piece on how six countries play soccer, and the analysis of Germany was written by Michigan professor Andrei Markovits: 

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/06/15/sports/worldcup/how-we-play.html

He was the only 'foreigner' writing about a country's style of play, but for those who know Andy, his entire life has been intertwined with things German. 

go16blue

June 16th, 2014 at 2:12 PM ^

Not a single professor I've disliked as much as Markovits in my couple of years at UM, but I must still respect at a certain level how prolific he is and how and passionate he is about his work. This piece at least was nice. I agree with much of what he says - it is very tempting (and fun!) to apply cultural stereotypes to soccer teams, but I don't think they hold up very often beyond our confirmation biases.

go16blue

June 16th, 2014 at 3:55 PM ^

Well he was the cause of 400+pgs of reading per week for me so I may be biased, but while he is certainly passionate, he has the most obnoxious ego out of any professor I've had. He had a habit of talking down to students, and got frustrated when people didn't show a perfect understanding of the material. The only questions students asked were those meant directly to feed his ego (what is your personal opinion of x?) to win brownie points, since everyone knew he loved questions like that. He's the kind of guy who starts off an article on college sports with a paragraph like this, feeling the need to establish academic credibility/superiority by showing off a large vocabulary, which says something about his type of academic imo. All in all I did well in his class, but it was a very frustrating experience. I prefer the down-to-earth types.

SamGoBlue2

June 16th, 2014 at 4:30 PM ^

Just in case any prospective, future, or current students read this comment thread and shy away from taking a class taught by Markovits I thought I would share my own perspective.

Andy, as he likes his students to call him, always seemed very approachable to me. Yes, he is an academic to a T and lets that be known to his students, but that wasn't much of a turn-off. Most professors at Michigan (and I assume at other elite schools around the country) are quite proud of their work and their research and Andy is no different.

In class, Markovits is a bit flighty, literally jumping from topic to topic on a wide blackboard filled with short quips to be discussed throughout lecture, but he's also very engaging with students. At times he would maybe get a little frustrated with students taking a bit longer to pick up on the material at hand, but he would only get short with a student if he/she asked a stupid question (and in my class, it was always the same kid asking stupid questions that EVERY other student in the class would groan about when his hand went up).

When my friend and I did decide to talk to him after class one day, we ended up staying about 20 minutes after and talked another 10 minutes or so about Michigan basketball with him as we walked out of Angell Hall. We eventually formed a friendly relationship and Andy took us out for a nice dinner a few months after our class had ended to catch up.

In short, I would recommend a Markovits class (some Politics and History of Sport was the one I took) to anyone who can. The professor that looks like he's Dr. Emmett Brown from Back to the Future and dresses like he just woke up is simply classic.

Funny aside: one day one of those people trying to pass out fliers for gimmick jobs to a lecture hall was in Markovits's room before the start of class, went through his talk, and started trying to pass stuff out before I believe DPS came in to escort him out, the guy went to the other side of the classroom, and Markovits basically ran him out of the room himself.

SCS100

June 16th, 2014 at 4:40 PM ^

That was a very entertaining beginning to a class.

I agree with everything in the above post. Take some time to get to know him and you will probably end up liking him. He is one of the most approachable people I know and will discuss just about anything with you. Doing research with him was one of the highlights of my undergrad life at Michigan. 

LBSS

June 16th, 2014 at 4:39 PM ^

So interesting, I loved Andy Markovits. One of my two or three favorite teachers at UM. I couldn't disagree more about his having an obnoxious ego -- not that you're wrong at all or that your opinion is invalid or anything, just that my experience of him was as a really engaged and engaging professor. Really fun to talk to in office hours, too. 

On reflection, maybe I just have a thing for egotistical professors? I loved Ashu Varshney, too (who's now moved on to Brown), and that dude's ego was big-time. Same with Juan Cole. But I never got the impression that Markovits was like them. Varshney and Markovits both liked me (both offered to write me recommendation letters for grad school), which I guess probably colored my view of them.

sadeto

June 16th, 2014 at 5:47 PM ^

Andy Markovits' reading lists prepared me well for graduate school at Michigan, where my advisor, the late Michel Oksenberg, would sometimes assign 700-800 pages per week. His suggestion? "Learn to skim, like I do." 

I am an incredibly biased fan and friend of Andy's. He was my mentor 30+ years ago at Boston U., helped me get into the top grad schools in my field, including Michigan, basically influenced the direction my life took. My older son's middle name is Andrei. But that doesn't mean he doesn't have a big ego, he does, it's challenging to deal with but the rewards of having him push you to a level where you could learn to engage with him were amazing. 

He is a caricature of himself, for sure. Another anecdote: when he was at BU, and also working at Harvard's CES, he was junior faculty so he had to teach early in the morning. He is the type who stays up all night reading, so he couldn't hack it. He had 3 alarm clocks, but he still needed to arrange for at least one if not two students to call him in the morning to wake him up. One was a Harvard grad student who lived near him in Cambridge just in case he didn't answer the phone. Thus the bed-head and messy clothes in class. 

kzooblue2016

June 17th, 2014 at 12:15 PM ^

While I enjoyed Markovits' sports and society class, I think the be all end all for sports classes at U of M has to be Bacon's. The guy has an insane amount of enthusiasm and passion for what he does.