Are you ready for some football? The NFL season kicks off this weekend. It should be fun!
With the Broncos being so popular, it’s hard to think of a school in Colorado that won’t have at least a few hundred students wearing the orange and blue on Fridays. Let’s hope they can have a good season, make the playoffs, and bring home another Lombardi trophy.
Football season is a really good teaching tool, too. There are ton of numbers involved. Great heroes (and anti-heroes) to read up on. And the history and geography of all the teams. Here are 11 easy class ideas to integrate football into the class for all students.
- Math: Super Bowl odds. Teach the ever-complex nuances of ratios, proportions, and fractions by tracking Super Bowl odds throughout the season. Assign a student a team, and have them give a breakdown each week on who’s in and who’s out. Also, in game probabilities are fun to track.
- STEM: Design a green stadium. Teach students to apply science, technology, engineering and math to dream up a super green stadium that can hold 70,000 fans or more. Give them a budget of $1 billion, the going rate for these things, and see what they come up with.
- Debate: Monday Morning Quarterback club. Students can dissect and analyze what went right and what went wrong on all matters of importance, from the NFL to anything the class might need.
- Reading: Heroes and Villains of the NLF. From Pat Tillman, to Mean Joe Greene, the NFL is full of heroes and antiheroes. They’re all good reads and lessons to know.
- Geography: Create a Google Map of NFL cities and design a road trip.
- Economics: Salary crap 101. The NFL salary cap is one of the most confusing thing about the sport. Teach students how to run an organization with a budget – it’s a super useful skill as they get older.
- Writing: Write a letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.
- Chemistry: After the Deflategate controversy, many have been wondering: Is the Ideal Gas Law for Real? Read about one interesting school that learned that yes, it is very much a factor.
- PE: 40 yard dash. Have students compare their 40 yard time to NFL played. Anything below 5.0 would be exception for kids. 4.3-4.5 is about as fast it gets in the NFL. Interestingly, research shows NFL athletes ran the 40 yard dash faster in high school.
- History: Comparing football coaches to army generals. Bell Belichick as General Patton? John Harbaugh as General Washington? Each coach has a style of their own before entering the field of battle, and it’s always fun to make historical comparisons to each.
- Art: To help stem some controversy, how about creating a new logo for the Washington Redskins?
Hope these make some good class connections! Enjoy the season.
Omaha!