During a typical school term, Dennis Hutchinson leads his students through the intellectual gymnastics of Practical Discourse II and The Elements of Judicial Strategy, two of the brainy courses that the legal scholar teaches at the University of Chicago Law School.
This month, however, Hutchinson climbs down a few steps from the ivory tower.
Hutchinson, a Rhodes scholar and clerk to Supreme Court justices Byron "Whizzer" White and William O. Douglas, has joined a dream team of University of Chicago faculty members offering a new undergraduate course, Sport, Society and Science.
In all, 10 Chicago professors drawn from departments throughout the university will lead the novel course, which will view sports from such perspectives as law, psychology, neurology, statistics, physics and economics.
Want legal commentary on why Bowie Kuhn prevailed over Curt Flood in the infamous reserve-clause decision? A sociological explanation of why Cubs fans paint their faces blue? This course boasts that it can explain.
Economist Allen Sanderson, who has taught a sports and economics course at the prestigious Chicago school for a decade, is the mastermind of Sport, Society and Science, which is limited to 50 students, mostly upperclassmen. In informal talk with colleagues dating back several years, Sanderson has been lining up star faculty members for the course, which met for the first time Jan. 6.
Among the teaching all-stars: physics professor Thomas Rosenbaum, statistics professor Stephen Sigler and anthropologist Holly Sywers. Sociologist John MacAloon, an expert on the Olympics, will lead an early class on the history of sports.
"There are no field trips to the United Center," cracked Sanderson. "It's a serious course, a rather demanding course, for students. They don't have to be professional statisticians or physicists. But they'll have to be Jacks and Jills of many trades."
Sport, Society and Science meets until mid-March, with a different professor leading class each week. Hutchinson's two sessions, in late January and early February, focus on federal regulation of sports.
The first lecture takes up the intersection of antitrust and labor laws, starting with a discussion of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' decision in Federal Baseball Club v. National League (1922) and analyzing later Supreme Court decisions, including Flood v. Kuhn (1972).
Civil rights and institutional autonomy will be Hutchinson's topic in the second lecture, with a review of PGA Tour v. Casey Martin (2001) and Cohen v. Brown University (1996), the pivotal Title IX decision.
"The assumption at the beginning of, and well into, the 20th century was that sports wasn't really a business and didn't need to be regulated by government. That certainly was true of organized professional leagues," Hutchinson said. "Now government and intervention seem to be winning on all fronts. We'll see what my class thinks about it."
Sanderson, a senior lecturer in the economics department, said he has a two-year commitment from the faculty members teaching Sport, Society and Science. None is being paid for his or her work on the course, which consists of leading two classes and grading midterm and final exams.
At least that's the time frame that Sanderson presented when he sold the new course to his colleagues.
"It turns out that was false advertising on my part," Sanderson said. "Everyone has decided they want to sit in on each others' classes. For most classes, the back row of the dugout will be full with the rest of our faculty colleagues."
Hutchinson, a self-described mediocre high school catcher and first baseman, said he decided to accept Sanderson's invitation because he's a sports fan and because he's between book projects. The main attraction, though, was his friendship with Sanderson.
"We have worked together on various administrative projects from time to time and share a passion which, in this university, is not widespread for taking professional sports seriously," Hutchinson said.
"The fun part," Hutchinson said, "will be sharing that with 50 undergraduates."
Students seemed eager, if somewhat apprehensive, after the first class, presided over by Sanderson and Hutchinson.
"It looks like a lot of reading: three required books and a packet of photocopied articles that the professors say is about 500 pages," said Bryan Gallagher, a third-year student from Pittsburgh and a pro football fan.
"I imagine a lot of people came into the course expecting a breeze, a nice way to get a credit doing fun stuff," said Jared Weiss, an economics major and Orioles fan from Rockville, Md. "That's definitely not the case. There's a lot of reading."
Mark Hyman (mhyman@sportsbusinessjournal.com) is a writer and lawyer.
