Abstract

The International Council for Coaching Excellence recently presented a position statement recognizing the professionalization of sports coaching as a global process. The tertiary education sector is assumed to be engaged in coaches’ education and producing an evidence-based knowledge foundation. Considering the scenario, the objective of this study is to explore the specific characteristics of the sports science curriculum in higher-education institutions. The method used was content analysis. It included institutions that presented the curriculum available in English on their official website. Grounded on the inclusion criteria, the sample covered thirty-nine universities in Oceania (n = 5), Asia (n = 6), Europe (n = 8), and the Americas (n = 20). The curricula of the high-quality universities were verified to detect which Olympic sports disciplines are a curricular component in undergraduate courses in sports science. Additionally, disciplines with the term sport or sports in the title were identified. Considering the Summer and Winter Olympic sports, thirty-seven sports are not included in any curriculum. The second category of disciplines was established from disciplines with the words’ sport or sports in the title. After excluding repeated titles, 386 disciplines were identified. The results from this study suggest that the current higher-education sports science curriculum might be reconfigured to comply with the Sport Coaching Bachelor’s Degree Standards of the International Council for Coaching Excellence.