Syracuse University will become the first school to offer sports analytics as a major when it welcomes a freshman class this fall that can earn the first bachelor’s degrees in the discipline by the spring of 2020, the New York Post reported Tuesday.

“I think it’s a great idea,” said former A’s GM Billy Beane, whose use of analytics to turn his team into a low-cost contender was at the heart of “Moneyball,” Michael Lewis’ bestselling book that became an Oscar-winning movie. “I smile to myself, especially thinking about the reactions when the book came out.”

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Scouting and in-game strategy — particularly in baseball — long had been based on gut instinct and experience within the game’s boxed-in groupthink. The A’s, and now many other teams, broke out of that model, and the idea of sports analytics is now accepted in most major American sports.

“This clearly will meet a need in the industry,” said Michael Veley, director of Syracuse’s sports management department, which will house the sports analytics degree. “And that’s what education is all about.”

In fact, the arc of acceptance of sports analytics has hit a trajectory that Syracuse sees its goal as developing not future GMs but instead giving students the wherewithal to become the team presidents who’ll hire the GMs.

The fact that the sports management department at Syracuse also runs the university’s David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics also could insert into the discipline how agents and teams negotiate, using statistical analysis.

Falk, a 1972 graduate of Syracuse, was a longtime player agent best known for his pioneering representation of Michael Jordan.

“I invented my own methodology of using my own economic data,” Falk told the Post, “It was based on the unique economic context of being the first lottery player.”

Using that sort of analysis, Falk and Jordan created a new form of player branding and negotiation that rewarded the player for on-court performance but also led to incredibly lucrative off-court endorsements.

It was, simply, a new way of doing things based on cold, hard numbers in the context of athletic performance.

One final gut reaction? Syracuse’s degree program is the way of the future.