Coaching Science 101 Final Exam
[You have three hours]
Answer ONE of the following
(The first question has two (2)--count 'em out, as we practiced--parts)
1) Write your opening statement that you would give to a room full of reporters concerning allegations that your star running back has been found in a motel room with an underage girl, a professional agent, a booster's credit card, and a half pound of Cocaine (You must include the phrase "quality individual" and "we don't air our dirty laundry in public" in your answer).
2) Within two, how many times does the word "ride" appear in the OSU fight song?
or
1) In a 200-word essay, who's your favorite coach of all time? Why? (Open book permitted)
Oklahoma State University is now offering a new minor in Coaching Science. Yes, a degree which will include, I imagine, all the challenges facing today's coaches: x's and o's, sneaker deals, first wives, recruitment violations, sideline pacing, headset wearing techniques, and how to refer to yourself in the third person. The course of study, which will require 18 hours, will be open, the school says, to any student in any discipline who are interested in coaching.
In any program? Really?
"Son, look, constitutional law is great, but the law is a fickle mistress and nobody ever made any real money deconstructing the Warren Court. Take the coaching minor. You never know. There is always a need for those who know how to install the nickel package."
In a related story (and you can decide how distant the relations), Oklahoma State University had some of the worst football and basketball graduation rates in the Big 12.
OSU’s football program raised its score from 903 to 947 in 2011-12 but has a four-year average of 926, the lowest among current Big 12 schools and third-worst among BCS schools. A score of 925 equals a 50 percent graduation rate. Although Cowboy basketball had a perfect 1,000 score in 2011-12, its rate stayed at 928 for a second straight four-year period, also the lowest in the conference.
And let's face it, if you offer a coaching minor, you're offering it so your athletes who are having difficulty with Proust and the Magna Carta can have some success in the "off" part of the
on and off the field cliche. Solution: lower the academic bar (say to the earth's inner core) so more of them will clear it. And the coaching minor not only does that, it augments quite nicely the major you offer in
Sports Management, which requires students to maintain a GPA of 2.0 and--hold on to your mortar boards--two actual math courses.
But the degree of difficulty to get a minor in coaching isn't even that steep.
The program is coordinated by Tim Baghurst, assistant professor in health and human performance in the College of Education. Baghurst says the college surveyed high school athletic directors, who said that a coaching science program will help better prepare future coaches.
Ah, yes, a better crop of assistant high school wrestling coaches. And, really, isn't that what college is all about?
OSU runs about $18-thousand a year for in-state students, about 30K for out of state, which as Eddie Albert said in the original THE HEARTBREAK KID (we don't talk about the remake with Ben Stiller around the dinner table), "is a lot of balls and bats."
One more thing: I'm begging you. Please stop with the coaching science business. This has as much to do with science as I do with parterres.
(*not included in course fees)
Oklahoma State Fight Song, wrestling terms
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