A former flatmate of mine was a talented footballer and used to turn out for Glasgow University. He competed against amateur teams from some of the city’s toughest areas - whose players relished the opportunity to kick a student with relative impunity.

One weekend, he returned to the flat from one of these sporting badlands with a story that still makes me chuckle nearly two decades later.

Football is ripe for exploration by teachers and pupils

He was a nimble player, whose sleight of foot could make opponents look foolish, and he had been playing well that day. A grizzled opponent was unimpressed by his style and chuntered words to that effect. My flatmate failed to heed the warning and casually slipped the ball past his floundering rival.

Retaliation was swift: he was suddenly scythed from behind, and went spiralling through the air. As he lay groaning on his back, a snarling face came into view and uttered the immortal line: “Take that, brains!”

Football and learning: never the twain shall meet, it often seems. In Scotland, certainly, a myopic obsession with football and a potent strain of anti-intellectualism makes for a toxic mix, served up memorably by my old flatmate’s nemesis. I also recall interviewing an urbane Norwegian footballer, Arild Stavrum, when he played for Aberdeen many years ago. He told of players on the team bus peering over incredulously when he settled into, of all things, a novel. (Stavrum has since become a writer of Nordic noir.)

Yet football as anti-education is not a solely Scottish idea. How many comedians over the years have earned a crust by doing an impression of David Beckham as a simpleton? How many football films exist that don’t fixate on boorish, knuckle-dragging football hooligans?

Good on paper

Football, for better or worse, is a global obsession that shows no signs of dying away, so it would be foolish not to attempt to channel its power towards more edifying ends - education included.

This remains a novel idea. After 10 years as an education reporter, last Friday, I attended my very first conference on football and education. University of the West of Scotland academic Sean Huddleston organised Football, Education, Prejudice to explore how some of society’s more anti-social tendencies manifest themselves in the sport (see next week’s TESS to read more).

The day confounded all expectations. The legendary commentator Archie Macpherson belied the buffoonish reputation of his trade with a compelling, extempore account of the interlinked history of football and sectarianism in Scotland. Rory Magrath, a lecturer at Southampton Solent University, challenged the received wisdom that football grounds are bastions of homophobia with the liberal and erudite views of supporters emerging from his research.

Football is ripe for exploration by teachers and pupils. In English, they could pick apart the elegant prose of Hugh McIlvanney and Brian Glanville, two pioneers of football literature. Students of modern studies might explore the power games that led to the controversial awarding of World Cups to both Russia and Qatar. League tables, transfer fees and tactical permutations all have rich potential for maths classes.

But teachers shouldn’t pander and there’s no point crowbarring in football when it will merely distract from conjugating French verbs or navigating the periodic table. And, yes, football is blighted by corruption, tribalism and gamesmanship that jar with school values.

But it seems to me the dilemma is similar to smartphones: yes, football is potentially disruptive. But, when appropriate, why not embrace the sport as a means to channel some of its mesmeric power into the classroom?

@Henry_Hepburn