My college experience was I was at Michigan to work on the Daily, which if you're trying to have a career in journalism that becomes a time commitment on par with athletics. Many schools offer journalism degrees, but several people I spoke to in high school said the Michigan route is better: the Daily is a real newspaper under real newspaper standards, and to be a good writer you have to have a sound basis of knowledge in everything else, and preferably a deep basis of knowledge in something.

A lot of Daily people take English--that gives you a stronger understanding of how language is used and that helps a lot when trying to interpret what people are saying or finding your voice. I chose history because it's like having the opportunity to cover hundreds of thousands of years of stories. Whatever you take you can make it relevant to your career. Foreign language opens up new pathways in your brain and new ways of thinking. So does studying foreign cultures. Social work gives you a grounded basis in the real lives of people under tremendous stress.

Michigan State's journalism school doesn't give you this basis, and it's rare to find a graduate who's in journalism rather than marketing. They know how to structure stories but not how to find them or tell them. They know how to sit in an room and cover a press conference but not how to put the readers in the room and get their questions answered.

I think athletic degrees would be much the same: you can major in basketball if you want to, but you won't be prepared to do more than basketball. I don't see anything wrong with offering that since it's a highly developed skill that translates to a highly competitive career. Future coaches especially woudl benefit from that. However like writing it's not just an intellectual exercise: you have to have chops, you have to have creativity, you have to practice and practice and practice. And you're going against other crazy talented people who are just as mad as you are about improving the craft.

I don't know what cognates well with sports, but the degrees that many athletes take today are instructive: communications, kinesiology, sports management, African-American Studies, etc. Fans are quick to believe that major sport athletes in these majors are not getting a serious education, and in some cases that's true (ahem, North Carolina). But consider what career paths often open up to them because they competed at such a high level of athletics: coaching and broadcasting. If you're going to be an athletic director one day, a college education in kinesiology and sports management is necessary. If you're aiming to be a high school coach at a school that produces a lot of black ahtletes, you also are going to have to be a teacher, and a Michigan undergrad degree in African American Studies can put you ahead of other candidates for good teaching schools and jobs. A lot of these guys also aim to start non-profits, using their athlete connections to build support networks and gain press--imagine how many degrees would be useful for that.

But who are we to force these majors because they might be helpful? The reason they're often seen--and treated--as a joke is because of the appearance that they're only taking them because they can't major in football or basketball. If you have football and basketball majors available, those who take that can hone their craft without the bullshit of pretending to be learning a different one. And I beileve, given the value of cognate degrees to futures in highly competitive, talent-based fields, you will still have plenty of athletes choosing not to major in their sport, or choosing schools that don't offer them as majors. Frankly I think it works out for everyone, except the NCAA in court if they're still trying to hold onto the fiction that college athletes only compete for fun.