Behind the Money in Sports: The Moves Behind How Your Favorite Team Was Built

In this class students will learn:
* the different decisions that teams make about how to play players
* how teams are financed
* the rules behind paying players in various sports
* how salary caps operate in various sports
* great moves that successful franchises have made in the past
* vocabulary surrounding budget concepts, economic concepts, and salary concepts (i.e. player option, team control, unrestricted free agent).
* Some basic spreadsheet analysis, budget concepts, x and y-axis data analysis

The class is structured as follows
I.  Introductions
II.  Analysis and observations of a chart, picture, graph, data sample, or spreadsheet related to sports
III.  Instructor commentary and questions in Socratic method style about student observations
IV.  Short share of video clip
V.  Instructions on a case study or simulation
VI.  Student-centered activity in a case study or simulation
VII.  Debrief and Questions


In this two-class course, we will learn how professional athletes are paid in the major sports and the ways teams decide what to play their players.  We will also look at the rules that certain sports use to try to maintain competitive balance and the ways certain teams are able to create special advantages for their teams.  We will cover up to three major sports based on student interest: football, basketball, and baseball. 

Students should have a basic understanding of a few of the major professional sports and it is helpful if they have working knowledge of the main players in the league and on their favorite team.  They also should be able to add data sets, subract, and interpret somewhat basic graphs. 

Students outside of the posted age for the class (8 year olds) are sometimes successful in my courses, but they must be mature, understand that they cannot dominate the conversation, and not be offended if they are not called on more than their fair share of the time.  Students who attempt to dominate the conversation or who otherwise are not engaged in learning from others will be gently redirected usually outside of class.