Tianjin University of Sport was founded in August 1958. In October 1969, Tianjin University of Sport was transferred from Hebei Province to the jurisdiction of Tianjin.
In the early stages of its establishment, the university gathered a group of outstanding coaches and athletes with high levels of competitive sports skills. Its results in sports such as wrestling, women's diving, swimming, men's basketball, and baseball ranked among the top in the country. The university won the championship in Greco-Roman wrestling, freestyle wrestling, and Chinese-style wrestling at the first National Games.
The Tuanbo Campus of the university is situated at the Health Industry Park in the west of Tuanbo New City in Jinghai district, covering an area of 74.38 hectares. The total area of various school buildings is about 388,600 square meters. It was put into use in November 2017. The total value of teaching and research instruments and equipment is over 1.9 billion yuan. The new library building covers an area of nearly 17,800 square meters. It has a total collection of 442,000 paper documents, 851 paper journals, 45 databases, more than 1.04 million electronic books, and more than 1.27 million electronic journals.
The university currently has 18 undergraduate majors covering six disciplines, including education, management, literature, art, science, and medicine. It began to enroll master's degree students in 1979 and was granted the right to confer master's degrees in 1986. In 2013, it passed the acceptance of the establishment of a doctoral degree authorization unit and was officially approved by the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council as a "doctoral degree-granting unit." The first-level discipline of sports science was approved as a "doctoral degree authorization discipline." The university has more than 6,500 full-time students, including 4,939 undergraduates, 68 doctoral students, 1,274 master's degree students, and 67 international students.
The university has 594 staff members, including 57 with senior professional titles and 127 with associate professional titles. Among the full-time teachers, 97 have doctoral degrees, and 286 have master's degrees. The university has one national-level excellent teaching team, 14 Tianjin municipal excellent teaching teams, and three Tianjin municipal "12th Five-Year" teaching innovation teams. It has four experts who enjoy special government allowances from the State Council, one national-level teaching master, 8 Tianjin municipal teaching masters, and 15 winners of various provincial and ministerial talent titles. The university has 43 doctoral supervisors and 197 master's supervisors.
The university has trained more than 30,000 applied talents for the national sports and education front line. It has emerged national advanced workers, national excellent sports teachers, provincial and municipal model workers, national team coaches and gold medalists. The university has made pioneering contributions in the fields of mass sports and national fitness, youth physical fitness surveys and evaluations, sports energy metabolism, Chinese bone age development standards, sports intelligence, and sports legal construction.