Spring 2027

Communicating Sports Controversies

Explores prominent sports controversies affecting sports communication professionals like journalists, broadcasters, marketers, and PR specialists, focusing on how these issues impinge on professional practices.

offering recorded3 credits
Recorded instructors · Spring 2027 Matt Hermann3.6/5

Summary

1 / 6

Past student reviews · Matt Hermann

The course centered on a semester-long group project with subjective grading, meaning individual performance could be significantly impacted by other group members.

What you’ll be able to do

  • Examine the core concepts and principles that are involved in today’s most salient sports controversies.

  • Explore the perspectives and practices of sports communication professionals with respect to these controversies.

Source: UW Guide

Grade history

↗
average GPA
letter grades
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All recorded terms · compare terms & instructors

Prerequisites

Course map

JOURN 150, 162, 201, or junior standing

JOURN 651

This is a best-effort interpretation; check the catalog requirements above.

Prerequisite text tree

Professors

Spring 2027
Adjusted rating
RMP difficulty
captured reviews
About this rating

Raw average: 2.50/5 from 2 quality ratings. The adjusted rating blends this with the UW review average (3.66/5), weighted as 20 additional ratings. Smaller samples stay closer to that average. Each captured review is counted once in the prior; this does not correct who chooses to leave a review.

RMP profile ↗ · All captured review dates; profile matched by name.

Past student reviews · Matt Hermann

Matt Hermann led a semester-long group project with unclear grading criteria and unhelpful feedback, which reviewers found frustrating and subjective. While one student found the lectures on sports media and guest speakers fun and passionate, another noted the material was niche and that group members could significantly affect individual grades.

Recent recorded grades — Fall 2023: 3.62 GPA, 91.3% A/AB (n=46 letter grades); Fall 2024: 3.54 GPA, 89.1% A/AB (n=46 letter grades); Spring 2026: 3.67 GPA, 93.5% A/AB (n=46 letter grades).

Historical instructors & teaching patterns

MATTHEW HERMANN is recorded teaching in Fall 2023, Fall 2024, Spring 2026. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Calendar & sections

Spring 2027

Schedule loads here as you scroll.

SectionModeEnrolled / capacityWaitlist
LEC 001Classroom Instruction0 / 500

Times are Central. Select a meeting for details; export includes recorded dates for the selected sections. Enrollment reflects scan time.

Meeting source records
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Student experience

the class

Past student reviews · Matt Hermann

Matt Hermann’s passion for sports media made lectures and guest speakers engaging, though the initial in-person iteration of the course felt disorganized.

Recent recorded grades — Fall 2023: 3.62 GPA, 91.3% A/AB (n=46 letter grades); Fall 2024: 3.54 GPA, 89.1% A/AB (n=46 letter grades); Spring 2026: 3.67 GPA, 93.5% A/AB (n=46 letter grades).

difficulty & workload

Past student reviews · Matt Hermann

The course centered on a semester-long group project with subjective grading, meaning individual performance could be significantly impacted by other group members.

Past student reviews · Matt Hermann

Students found the grading criteria for the group project unclear and noted that feedback was unhelpful, which was frustrating despite the instructor’s enthusiasm.

Topics

  • Prominent sports controversies
  • Sports communication professional roles including journalism, broadcasting, marketing, and PR
  • Impact of controversies on professional practices

Skills

  • Examine core concepts and principles of salient sports controversies.
  • Explore perspectives and practices of sports communication professionals regarding controversies.

Grades

Latest available · Spring 2026— not enough history to project Spring 2027.

average GPA
A / AB grades
letter grades
Instructor

Grade distribution · % of letter grades

A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

Grades over time

Through Spring 2026

More grade details Grade mix, volume & source data

Where this course fits relative to

Latest available grades · Spring 2026 · all course levels

GPA

Higher than % of other courses in this group.

Course GPAs · red marks this course’s range

letter grades

More recorded grades than % of other courses in this group.

Typical course in this group: letter grades.

About this comparison

1280 courses over the same term, each with at least 30 recorded letter grades. Cross-listed courses count once. GPA is not a measure of difficulty or teaching quality. The typical course is the median by recorded grade count; tied values are not counted as lower. Grade counts describe course scale, not unique students or typical section size.

Descriptions compare GPA with this group’s average: at least 0.20 higher or lower; otherwise close to average. Section size uses median recorded enrollment: small up to 30, mid-sized 31–99, large 100+. Lectures and discussion/lab sections are described separately.

Sources & history

UW–Madison

Catalog & offerings

Descriptions, prerequisites, and recorded course offerings.

Catalog observation history

Observations at scan time; dates do not imply when a catalog change took effect.

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Selected offering source records
JOURN 651 · Spring 2027

Communicating Sports Controversies

Recorded 2026-10-14
Raw records 
[
  {
    "run_id": "20261014T203208-0851c9a1",
    "semester": "1274",
    "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00",
    "offering_id": "1274:512:025582",
    "course_id": "JOURN 651",
    "course_uid": "course_4ca97ba9e84ff8975e9c8755",
    "term_id": "1274",
    "source_course_id": "025582",
    "source_subject_id": "512",
    "title": "Communicating Sports Controversies",
    "credits_min": 3,
    "credits_max": 3,
    "typically_offered": "Not Applicable"
  }
]
Rate My Professors

Student reviews

Original comments behind the course and instructor summaries.

Read original reviews
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Madgrades

Grade history

Recorded grade distributions by term, section, and instructor.

Explore recorded grades
Dataset & model

Recorded 2026-10-14

View the dataset on Hugging Face
Model outputs & technical records
Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B
LLM outputs across runs
Download part 1
Full model traces

Recorded model configuration, reasoning, and tool conversations.

Download part 1
Model & dataset provenance 
{
  "model": "Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B",
  "model_revision": "1d4bf0f2ff6012fd82039f2fa52739d0dd7c60c0",
  "task_version": "17",
  "output_id": "c197bac020c5b18986fb5ae01cf1e3803081c813aab8f141eb01713e08f7634d",
  "requirements_status": "valid",
  "dataset_revision": "fc1811fa52e581ea57a35c0cf3343f8740a8ffbf",
  "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00"
}