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The author reflects on designing a “bait-and-switch” style class to convert casual movie-and-reading preferences into analytical literary scholarship. Narrative includes two quarters of implementation: building film-analysis foundations, explaining relationships among sport, story, and narrative, and using narrative space/time as an interpretive framework to show how real events become truer-than-false fiction.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":10,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/story-novel/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/the-risks-and-rewards-of-sports-lit-and-other-bait-andswitch-courses-essay/597591/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/the-risks-and-rewards-of-sports-lit-and-other-bait-andswitch-courses-essay/597591.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"pop out","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-20","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":8},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What does the author mean by a “bait-and-switch” sports and literature course?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"The course is designed to attract students who expect sports movies or simple reading, then shift them toward structured literary and narrative analysis. The aim is to transform casual interest into scholarly capability.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"How does the author describe students’ initial reactions on the first day?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"Only a small number raise their hands for literature, and even those students ask to adjust answers, signaling uncertainty about two different questions. The author uses the awkward start to frame the course’s challenge.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What teaching approach begins the term during the second quarter?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"The author starts with a long unit on film analysis, emphasizing modeling, scaffolding, and progression. 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It was 8:00 AM sharp, and I was staring at what seemed to be a sullen group of fifteen students who were, apparently, being held against their will. In the middle row (the first was empty), two hands went up cautiously, the students raising them looking about as if realizing that they, unlike their peers beside and behind them, were the only ones in town to volunteer for the draft. After a dramatic pause, I then asked,“And how many of you love sports?”  \nI had tried to pose the question with a hint of intrigue in my voice, as if I was up to something pretty dang special, something along the lines of free tickets to the Super Bowl for everyone. Unfazed and, it seemed, possibly unplugged, the other students lazily raised their hands, as if they knew the question was coming and were hoping to earn an extra credit point or two for playing along. Then, one of the literature lovers spoke up, saying,“Wait. What? I didn’t know there were two questions. Can I change my answer?” This was not an auspicious start to the semester, and I felt (and likely looked) not a little unlike Walter Matthau standing in front of his players on the first day of practice.  \nMy players are, with the exception of the two who admitted to liking literature, just that: players. Four play hockey, two basketball, one golf, three baseball, and one softball; one of thenon-college athletes (and truly one of the nicest students in the bunch) competes in some version of ultimate fighting and the other is a former gymnast turned dancer. None are, according to the letters they wrote to me at the beginning of the term,“readers,” but each it seems would, as one allowed when signing off with a PS, be “cool with reading some stuff and books or whatever as long as we also get to watch the movies.”  \nWhat had I expected when creating what I had brazenly referred to as a “bait-and-switch kind of course” when making it available to all comers? English majors pursuing sports minors? A bunch of Rhodes Scholars? The superhuman offspring of Neil deGrasse Tyson and Sonja Henie? I don’t know for sure, but I am fairly certain that it wasn’t at all what I ended up with.  \nI spent significant time over the past year developing a course that would examine sports themes and analyze the literary techniques authors, directors, and others employ when converting this seemingly facile facet of contemporary life into art. I worked my way through what are at times perfunctory preparatory tasks with an uncommon kind of ardor for this kind of work– rather than gearing up as I normally do for a new course with a casual, it-will-work-out approach learned over the last eighteen years of teaching, I geared up in ways more normally associated with getting ready for the Olympics or possibly a new season as a highly-paid NFL head coach. I planned the course–developing assignments and picking readings and laying out units and individual classes–as one might think through an entire season of close wins and sure things.“These novels and these films,” I would say to myself with a smile and swagger usually associated with corrupt baseball managers betting against their own teams,“will, when combined  \nwith my crazy-creative and challenging assignments and brilliant lectures, convert latent readers of literature into full-fledged scholars, a transformation akin to converting Dick Butkus or Terry Bradshaw into Harold Bloom or Milan Kundera.” That much I knew for certain. My students, regardless of where they ranked as academic scholars on the first day of class, would by the end of the term, thanks to my efforts and theirs, be able to write the equivalent of a 40-yard dash in under 3.8 seconds and, as if that weren’t enough, del","cbCailSVf0yZGwTs","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCailSVf0yZGwTs","pdf",686536,11,"English","# 1st Quarter: “If you build it, they will come.” ~Field of Dreams\n## Introducing the Sports and Literature course\n# 2nd Quarter: “I will not be intimidated; that's just the way it is.” ~Remember the Titans\n## Film analysis unit and narrative concepts","[{\"question\":\"What does the author mean by a “bait-and-switch” sports and literature course?\",\"answer\":\"The course is designed to attract students who expect sports movies or simple reading, then shift them toward structured literary and narrative analysis. The aim is to transform casual interest into scholarly capability.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the author describe students’ initial reactions on the first day?\",\"answer\":\"Only a small number raise their hands for literature, and even those students ask to adjust answers, signaling uncertainty about two different questions. The author uses the awkward start to frame the course’s challenge.\"},{\"question\":\"What teaching approach begins the term during the second quarter?\",\"answer\":\"The author starts with a long unit on film analysis, emphasizing modeling, scaffolding, and progression. Students are gradually introduced to the exactitudes and rewards of literary analysis through core concepts like sport, story, and narrative.\"}]","The Risks and Rewards of Sports Lit and other Bait-andSwitch Courses - Essay | PDF",1792085302,17]