The Role of Sports Economics in the Sport Management Curriculum

Table 3 summarizes the data on the departments that are host to sport management
programs. The categories of department titles shown on Table 3 have been summarized
to some extent. For example, the category Health/PhysEd/Human Performance includes
departments with names containing two or more of the listed terms. Based on their names,
these apepar to by hybrid departments that are composed of faculty from two or more
disciplines. Examples include Department of Health and Physical Education, Department of
Human Performance and Health Promotion, and Department of Health, Physical Education,
Recreation and Dance. The category Sport/Exercise Science includes departments wither
either “Sport Science” or “Exercise Science” in their names. The category Kinesiology
includes all departments with “Kinesiology” in their name. These departments may be
very similar, but without a detailed examination of the faculty I was unable to determine
how similar they might be. The category No Departmental Affiliation includes all sport
management degree programs that were not directly affiliated with an academic department.
less than 10% of the sport management undergraduate degrees in this sample are of-
fered by departments of sport management or sport administration, so it appears that most
sport management degrees are offered by some other department. Instead, many sport
management degrees are offered by departments related to health, physical education, and
human performance. The total degree offerings from five similar categories of departments
– Health/PhysEd/Human Performance Kinesiology, Sport/Exercise Science, PhysEd and
Health/Sport categories – accounts for over 46% of the departments awarding undergradu-
ate sport management degrees. I found it somewhat surprising that such a large fraction of
sport management degrees – almost 20% – are offered in departments of business or manage-
ment because I do not personally know of very many sport management programs located
in business schools.
A similar picture emerges in the distribution of departments granting masters degrees in
sport management, shown on Table 4. Like undergraduate degrees, a minority of masters
degrees are awarded by departments of sport management or sport administration. Over
50% of masters degrees in sport management are awarded by departments that, based on
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