Indian Wells

I feel the event that took place at Indian Wells with the Williams sisters was unfortunate. While the circumstances may have appeared to be fishy there is no way it could be proved that there was wrong doing on the behalf of Venus and Serena. There is no place for booing and racial slurs to be thrown at a nineteen year old girl and her family. People need to realize injuries occur with professional athletes all the time. Even the slightest injury can nag an athlete in all aspects of the game especially a game that lasts as long as tennis does. Tennis matches can last for hours on end of non stop running back and forth. If Venus had an injury I have no reason to doubt her. I know if I have an injury that tweaks the way I play and is uncomfortable, I don't want to have to run non stop for hours and try to beat someone who is at the top of her game. I understand it may look bad on Venus for withdrawing but she has to do what is best for herself and if she thought withdrawing was best then we as fans have to respect that. Fans need to realize that Tennis is her source of income and her life, if she plays hurt and furthers her injury who knows what that could do to her career. As for booing Serena the entire match, fans have that right but they also need to realize she was only a nineteen year old girl at that point in her life. Many of those fans probably have children around that same age. How would they feel if thousands of people booed their kid and yelled racial slurs at them? It could not have been easy for Serena. It was probably very intimidating in that environment given that the majority of the crowd are white people yelling and booing at her. She has no place to run and hide like most nineteen year olds would resort to. Instead she competed at a high level like a true professional. I found the video of Indian Wells very interesting. You could obviously see fans booing, yelling, and cussing at Richard and Venus as they walked into the stadium. Once again being surrounded by thousands of white people yelling slurs at you and your family as you are one of few African Americans has to be very intimidating. At one point Richard stopped and looked at one fan after he yelled something. I can not blame Richard, as a father it is natural to go into protection mode when people are chastising his children. I also did notice the similarities to the raising of his fist as the sprinters did in the 1968 Olympics. I will defend him as I feel it showed him symbolizing unity with his family in an obviously difficult position. There is no place in sports for what happened at Indian Wells in 2001 and I hope no family or athlete will have to go through that again. Fans need to realize athletes are humans as well and can not always perform if they ae hurt. Post by Jared King.

The Jordan Effect

The Jordan effect      By Trent Ringle

The Jordan effect is a term I feel that has reached many lives, and brought a great deal of opportunity to those who have experienced it.  This is a concept that has arisen from the unbelievable career of Michael Jordan. From his athletic career he has touched the lives of hundreds of thousands both on a off the court. The question I want to bring up is if he is the only person who has done this so called “Jordan Effect”. In addition, from what he started have other athletes tried to take the same path?  MJ has his own clothing line, shoes, race team, has been in films, and endorsed hundreds of commercials for different products. However, there are both pros and cons to this.

Pros

Money grossed by others from MJ’s fame

The attention given to Chicago when he played professional ball

The image of Michael Jordan that companies will use for years to come

Cons

Bad publicity could hurt his image and the industry

Just because it’s his brand does not mean it’s the best option for you

From what Jordan has done, I feel it has given other athletes opportunities. Let us look at other examples of this for instance Lebron James he has become one of the top athletes of 21^st century, and when he played for Cleveland, he brought an enormous amount of money into the city. He also has been in a number of commercials and ads and is a representative for Nike. On the negative side now that he has left Cleveland the town has reverted to its old ways with stores and industries going out of business all because of one man leaving a team. Dwayne Johnson also known as The Rock a professional wrestler is another example of this. He has gone from an athlete to a film star playing the lead role in a number of movies. From the Jordan effect, do you believe that other athletes are trying to venture out and take up other career options?  In our time, will we ever see another athlete come close to the skill level of Michael Jordan or build something close to “The Jordan Effect”?

Girls playing on boys' teams

In class last Wednesday we got into our groups to discuss some topics regarding girls playing on boys' teams. We decided to answer the first question of whether girls should be allowed to play football on boy's teams. After discussing in our group we came to the conclusion that girls should be allowed to play football on boys' teams.

As a group we discussed the pros and cons of girls playing football on a boys' team and came up with some very good pros and cons. First and foremost the most obvious pro for girls playing football on a boys' team is that they are getting the opportunity to play football on an organized team. Another pro would be that girls would feel a sense of accomplishment because they are part of the team and would be making a contribution to the team. There are a couple cons for girls playing football on a boys' team though. The first con for girls playing would be that they would be at a higher risk of getting injured going up against stronger and bigger boys. Another con would be how the opposing teams would treat the girl on the field and what would they do with their game play to exploit the situation. A very big con would be regarding the locker room situation. What would be done about the locker room situation if a girl was on the team? Would she have her own locker room and separated from the team or would she share the same locker room. That situation is very important and would need to be taken care of with respect to the team, players, and the girl or girls on the team. The cons do not outweigh the pros we feel and still believe that girls should be allowed to play football on boys' teams. With that being said, girls playing on boys' teams would also help out other girls because it would get exposure about the situation.


Post by Nick Daverio

Budget Allocation

This Post was done by Trent Ringle

Being an athletic director or someone who holds any high position where you control the budget of all your sports programs at your school has to be one of the more stressful jobs around. Only having a set amount of money that can be budgeted for the different athletic programs brings up a number of different topics. Exactly how this money should be distributed among the programs, which program needs it more, which one deserves it more. A number of questions need to be answered before a sound budget can be written out.

            In the budget allocation assignment, our school has a $120,000 budget to divide between all the sports team. Along with this a donation which was given to our school for $20,000 bring our total now to $140,000. Lastly, four athlete programs can receive $60 per player by doing fundraisers. We as a group decided that the teams with the most players should do the fundraisers in order to bring in the most amount of money to help fund as many sports teams as we can. This brings our grand total to $155,300 that we can spend for all the different athletic programs. Of this amount, $151,350 must be spent on what teams need to have. The left over $3,950 that we had we decided to spend it on both the men and women’s soccer and track teams, and the women’s volleyball team.

            Our decision to give these specific teams the extra money was based on which teams we could give the most support too. All five of these teams are rank in the top five of their conferences making our decision to give them the extra money an easy one, they deserved it. When being an athletic director Title IX plays a big part in the final decision. In the exercise, we wanted to make sure that we were not; judgmental in whom we gave money to. This is what lead us to give money to both men’s and women’s team, giving them an equal opportunity to receive financial help and to help them excel in their individual sport.

            Though some programs might think it is unfair who we decided to give the extra money to there are both negatives and positives that were contributed to our cause with the positivest out weighing the negatives. A question to bring up would be what if we did not have the full amount of money needed to support our sports programs. In which sport program would cuts be made that would still help our athletic programs get the proper support they need. Thankfully, in this exercise we did not have to cut any teams and were able to give all the financial help that we could to our programs.

About Title IX

From Class last Wednesday each of our groups had questions to answer over Title IX. The question that we decided to answer was question #8, “In 2004 intercollegiate competition for women is characterized by full seasons, paid coaches, financial aid, and more similar funding for equipment, uniforms, and travel. Find a few negatives among the positives.”

As a group we thought about this question and came up with some great examples of some of the negatives that come along with these positives. First and foremost the most obvious negative is that women’s sports don’t even get close to the amount of national attention or television coverage that men’s sports get. The only time that a women’s game is even aired is if it is a big time game or a big name player is in it. For men’s sports there are always games on no matter what teams are playing.

The fact that this happens brings in another negative. Women’s sports don’t make as much revenue for the school as men’s teams would. With television coverage that brings way more money to a University. And with women’s sports minimally televised they don’t get as many chances to produce high amounts of revenue.

Lastly this is hurting the overall competition in NCAA women’s basketball and probably all other sports as well. The teams that are getting the national coverage, (ex. Uconn), are continually going to be the top contenders. Because they get the most coverage in women’s basketball all the best players want to go there so that they can be on television and be known about. This is why women’s college basketball seems so unfair and that the same teams always will do well. Hopefully something will soon change and women’s basketball will be covered and televised more. 

Post by Kane Godfrey

Super Bowl

The week leading up to the big game sprung questions of whether or not the rematch could live up to the first Super Bowl between the great Tom Brady and Eli Manning. I feel our questions were answered as this Super Bowl between the Patriots and Giants was just as good if not better. I feel the commercials were overall not quite as funny as years before and I will touch base on the halftime show and how it is a joke. First let's focus on the game. One thing that really stood out to me was the uncharacteristic penalties by both teams. The Giants had one or two delay of games and they had to take two timeouts in the fourth quarter to save themselves from getting a delay of game. As for the Patriots, they had the 12 men on the field in the beginning of the game that cost them, of course Tom Brady had the intentional grounding that resulted in a safety, and they also had an offside in the fourth quarter I believe. Both teams pride themselves in discipline and both teams had lack there of. Now look at the fourth quarter drops by the New England Patriots. With nine minutes to go I believe on first down Wes Welker dropped the seam pass. Second down, Aaron Hernandez drops an easy completion over the middle and on third down Deion Branch has the ball but drops it after being hit by the safety. Someone had to step up and make a play but no one did. My last point I want to make about the game itself is Eli Manning is a winner! I thought for sure he was done for in the middle of the fourth quarter. He was short hopping receivers and every throw was wobbly. Sure enough, Eli in the clutch is cool and collected and like he has all year led his team down the field for another fourth quarter victory. How can you be upset with that Super Bowl? How can you beat the game being decided on a hail mary as time expires? The answer is you can't. I don't know what it is about the Super Bowl that brings out these dramatic finishes but I for one can not wait for next year already. Let's go Browns! Moving on to the commercials. I feel they have been on a slight decline over the past couple years but there are still a few select quality commercials this year. I loved the M&M commercial. I thought it was hilarious and dealt more with our generation's humor. I also loved the Bud Light here Wego commercial. It was funny to see a dog running all over to bring beer to a crowd of people, I wish that dog was mine. Other commercials that amused me were the sketchers commercial with the dogs and I got a chuckle out of the. At commercial with the vampires solely because of how dumb it was. Finally let's look at the halftime show with Madonna. After the concert was over they came over the sound system and thanked everyone for watching the halftime show. I felt they should thank me for watching it because I felt it was a waste of my time. For one she was lip singing the entire show. I for one take pride in singers providing me with live entertainment or at least give it their best and not cop out. There has also been a big buzz about M.I.A flipping off the camera. I didn't even know who M.I.A was before that show so I give her credit, any publicity is good publicity right? I feel Madonna still is kicking strong but felt is was just a bad choice for the Super Bowl which is supposed to be family friendly. This is the same woman that sings Like a Virgin. This is the same woman that made out with Brittany Spears and Christina Aguleira during a show. I don't care if the show will be corny with someone like the Beach Boys or something, they at least are better role models in my opinion. That is all I have to say. I know this was a long post but thanks for bearing in there with me. Post by Jared King.