These days, one measure of a pop-culture phenomenon is how quickly it gets its own college course.
Last summer Rutgers University offered a course on Beyoncé, while Skidmore College held one on Miley Cyrus. A few years ago Rice University listed a course devoted to “the mythology, symbolism, and history of Batman.” Professors elsewhere have pegged courses to The Simpsons, South Park, The Wire, Star Trek, and many other popular TV shows.
And now, there’s a course on Deflategate.
For readers who have managed to avoid it or forget what it is, Deflategate (or Ballghazi, if you prefer) is a bizarre pro-football scandal in which employees of the New England Patriots may have conspired to make their game balls squishier than league rules allow. The allegations brought an avalanche of speculation, followed by a months-long investigation.
Michael McCann, a law professor at the University of New Hampshire, will teach a course in the fall called “Deflategate: The Intersection of Sports, Law, and Journalism.”
“This class is not about deflated footballs,” wrote the professor in a description of the course. “Instead, it is about the interplay between those footballs — along with numerous other sports ‘things’ — and the legal, regulatory, and journalistic systems governing sports.”
Margaret McCabe, an associate dean at the university’s School of Law, came up with the idea. The school had been looking for ways to strengthen its relationship with New Hampshire’s undergraduate program since it merged with the university several years ago. Grabbing the attention of undergrads means working a little harder to make dry-sounding topics like antitrust law, labor law, and tort law seem more exciting, said Ms. McCabe.
She saw a natural hook with Deflategate, a scandal that has implicated the hometown team and its beloved quarterback. (Although it’s actually a bit of a marketing ploy to suggest the course is “about” the scandal — which will not be discussed until the final week of the course, after the students have learned about all those other topics.)
Forensics and Fanhood
The relationship between Deflategate and higher education did not start with Mr. McCann’s course. College professors were roped in shortly after news of an investigation broke, in January. Reporters flocked to their nearest campuses to consult with physicists about the science of football deflation, prompting some professors to put footballs in freezers and measure the effect on their internal air pressure.
Soon the National Football League’s investigators came calling, asking Columbia University’s physics department if it would help figure out if the Patriots had tampered with the game balls used in a playoff game. The investigating firm eventually enlisted Daniel R. Marlow, a professor of physics at Princeton University, as a consultant.
The investigators’ report, a marathon of forensic analysis punctuated by graphs and data tables, came out on Wednesday. The document concludes that it was “more probable than not” that the Patriots cheated — a formulation far more befitting of an academic paper than a stadium chant.
Yet when the Patriots’ quarterback Tom Brady took the stage at Salem State University on Thursday, his first public appearance since the report’s findings were released, the students there seemed undeterred in their adulation. According to The New York Times, they showered Mr. Brady with chants of “MVP!” and booed when the report was mentioned.
Sports arguments are typically won by whoever can come up with the best taunt. In theory, academic disputes are won by whoever has the most support for his or her argument.
One of the aims of Mr. McCann’s course, according his outline, is to “expose students to how to think about facts, their sources, and how they are used to ‘prove’ a position, whether in the media, the courtroom, or other venue.”
The culture gap between sports and academe is why New Hampshire thinks Deflategate is perfect fodder for a college course.
“You have that raw material to work with, of somebody being a fan and being pretty passionate about that,” said Ms. McCabe, the associate dean. “And you have to unpack that in a very measured way as part of being a thinking person.”
Steve Kolowich writes about how colleges are changing, and staying the same, in the digital age. Follow him on Twitter @stevekolowich, or write to him at steve.kolowich@chronicle.com.
