Instructor’s Manual for The Economics of Sports, 7th edition Revised and updated by Dr Qi Ge, Vassar College, New York, USA Chapter 1 Economics and Sports ◼ Outline Introduction 1.1 The Organization of the Text 1.2 Babe Ruth and Comparative Advantage Opportunity Costs Absolute and Comparative Advantage Biographical Sketch: Babe Didrikson Zaharias Summary, Discussion Questions, Problems ◼ Teaching Tips and Additional Examples A unique challenge in teaching a course in the economics of sports is refining student expectations for the class. Indeed, some professors and departments have been reluctant to offer a course in this field over worries that it will attract students wishing to take a “blow-off” course or that the topic of sports cannot be made rigorous enough to be included in a college curriculum. Therefore, it is important from the very beginning of the class to emphasize that the course is first and foremost an economics class and that sports merely supplies the context in which to study economics. As noted by a colleague, “Expectations can sometimes be seriously off track for those students who may have chosen the course more because they saw the word ‘sports’ in the title rather the word ‘economics.’ ” As you go over the syllabus, it is important to emphasize the economic theories that you look forward to covering as opposed to the sports events and history. As the prerequisites for this course vary greatly from school to school, as does the intended audience, it may be worthwhile to collect information from each student about past coursework in economics and math in order to tailor the class to the ability level of the students enrolled. It may be helpful to stress that economics is an incredibly flexible subject that can be applied to just about any facet of life. In this respect, as the course progresses it is often useful to remind the students some parallel application to the current topic. The key is to show that the economic principles (and therefore the rigor) does not change even if the application of those principles do. This is particularly important if the class is offered as a lower level elective with minimal prerequisites but ends up attracting an audience primarily made up of senior economics majors. With a diverse distribution of students, the emphasis on the application of economics will help teach the principles to those who may be seeing these concepts for the first time, and reinforcing them to the more advanced students. It may also be worthwhile to poll students about their favorite sports and teams, again to tailor the class to the interests of students in class. For example, when teaching competitive balance one can draw examples from any league, and using a sport for which students in class have expressed a preference is likely to keep students more interested in the topic even as the technical details of measuring competitive balance are explained. Similarly, a class with a large number of foreign students, for example, is likely to express