For decades, a small but passionate group of academics has offered a potential balm for the fraught relationship between athletics and education at major universities: Allow students to major in sports.

One such educator is David Hollander, a clinical professor at New York University’s School of Professional Studies. He has spent years espousing the intellectual value of basketball — positionless play, he says, can teach entrepreneurial thinking, and fast breaks can teach interpersonal communication. Mr. Hollander lobbied for the Catholic Church to name a patron saint of basketball (it did) and helped convince the United Nations to declare Dec. 21 World Basketball Day.

Within the next year, in what he sees as a small step in the road toward athletics being taken seriously in the academy, Mr. Hollander is planning to teach a course for varsity, Olympic and professional athletes in which their experiences playing and practicing their sport will be part of the curriculum.

“You can get a degree right now in higher education, in dance and art and music, drama,” Mr. Hollander said. “And I think those are totally valid degrees. They’re portals into the human condition.”

He added: “I don’t see how athletics is any different. How that ancient cultural form, like those ancient cultural forms that I’ve mentioned, are not intrinsically academically meritorious.”

Recently, the ideas of educators like Mr. Hollander found a notably influential audience: the sports apparel company Nike, which pumps hundreds of millions of dollars into college sports through its numerous sponsorship agreements.

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