On Thursday, July 3rd, Tsuyoshi Kawata, coach of the American football team at Stanford University in the United States, who is also involved in the collaborative educational program "Stanford e-KyuSan-U," appeared as a guest speaker in a lecture titled "Introduction to Sports Science" for first-year students in the Department of Department of Sport Science and Health Faculty of Human Sciences.
Kawada has won the Japanese national championship in American football four times as a player and once as a coach. He was a member of the team that won the first American Football World Cup in 1999, and after retiring he moved to the United States in 2007 and became a coach for the prestigious Stanford University American Football Team. Currently, among Japanese players and coaches, he is said to be the person closest to being in the American professional football league (NFL).
The lecture introduced the cultural differences between the United States and Japan, as well as American college sports, which are attracting worldwide attention, using examples and video clips. It was an opportunity to learn about the real situation of the playing environment and the approach to competition for fellow university athletes.
In addition, he also explained the mechanisms behind sports business, such as the revenue sharing system adopted by the American Professional Football League, "Revenue Sharing*." He also spoke about the factors that have enabled top sports in the United States to be operated at a high standard for a long period of time.
He concluded his lecture by saying, "I decided to go to the United States because I wanted to have more experience with the sport of American football. There were many differences between Japan and the United States, but I really sympathized with the American philosophy of 'try and think first.' Nowadays, there is an abundance of information, such as the Internet, and you can find many ways for you to go to the United States. If you have even the slightest interest or opportunity, I would encourage you to give it a try."
Our university will continue to strengthen collaboration with overseas universities in various fields in order to become a "global comprehensive university that integration of humanities, sciences, and arts."
*Revenue sharing: A system in which revenues from ticket sales and merchandise sales are pooled across the entire league and distributed equally to all teams in the league. This allows teams to operate on the same footing, regardless of the size of the city in which they are based.
[Department of Sport Science and Health]
