June 9, 2010, the NCAA The University of Southern California with a two year bowl game probation and a loss of twenty football scholarships. This ruling came after allegations surrounding former basketball and football stars: Oj Mayo and Reggie Bush (Klein). Both players supposedly took money from agents and event planners illegally and landed their school in big trouble. This controversy had raised the question: if college athletes were paid by their schools and the NCAA, would this illegal activity still take place and get schools on probation. The fact of the matter is, paying college athletes would not solve this problem; it would ruin the world of college sports, and schools and the NCAA simply do not have the money and funds to pay all of the athletes in college sports.
June 9, 2010, the NCAA penalized The University of Southern California with a two year bowl game probation and a loss of twenty football scholarships. This ruling came after allegations surrounding former basketball and football stars: Oj Mayo and Reggie Bush (Klein). Reggie Bush was caught by taking money and an apartment that his family lived in during his tenure at USC. The school was forced to return their copy of Bush's heisman trophy. While Mayo took money from NBA agents while in high school. This controversy had raised the question: if college athletes were paid by their schools and the NCAA, would this illegal activity still take place and get schools on probation? The fact of the matter is, paying college athletes would not solve this problem; it would ruin the world of college sports, because now the richest schools and teams could pretty much buy championships like the Yankees.
Jason Lewis wrote a fantastic article in the Los Angeles Sentinel entitled “Paying College Athletes is Nothing but Trouble.” I would have to agree with him on this main aspect. He makes many valid points in this article. He first brings up the recent Reggie Bush scandal that took place at USC where he accepted gifts illegally and now USC is suffering a 2 year bowl probation and a loss of 30 scholarships. Many believe that paying student athletes would stop this under the table stuff from taking place, but not Lewis. He then jumps into the situation. If a star running back is paid money, does his backups get paid the same amount, and if he doesn’t could he just transfer to another school where he could play and receive more money. This could present a huge problem if the NCAA would even think about letting schools pay their players. And all schools aren’t going to have an equal budget, so schools like USC and Texas can pay players more money. That means big time universities would just be able to buy out the best players, kinda like the free agent market in baseball. Why would a kid go play football at a school like Colorado State when he can go make more money else where. So schools like Boise State could never compete like they do now since they do not have the funds like schools like Texas, Ohio State, and Florida. Where is all the money coming from. Do the smaller sports also get paid along with the big boys like football and basketball. Not to mention where the money is going to come from when talking about paying division 2 and division 3 athletes. These kids are getting their tuition and meals paid for, is that not enough. And a large percentage of these kids are never going to play professional sports, so they need these scholarships to better themselves for what lies ahead. A lot of players think that they should receive money when they see their jerseys sold on campus, but if they are that good they will see profits from jersey sales in the NFL or NBA. These kids need the college more than the college needs them. Could Bush have signed a huge contract without playing college football I think not.
He constructs it very well, and provides very good points in his argument. I think it is very convincing because it has hard to argue where all the money would come from to pay these kids, so that is definitely one thing I will cite when constructing my paper.Also, saying that big time programs could just buy the best players, which would be terrible for the world of college football and basketball. I will use most of this information, because I agree with him is saying paying these athletes is a bad idea and they receive enough in scholarships and meal plans. Also, kids are still going to accept gifts from agents, so paying players really wouldn’t solve the problem.
Lewis, J.. "Paying college athletes is nothing but trouble. " Sentinel 29 Jul 2010,Black Newspapers, ProQuest. Web. 3 Nov. 2010. |
Concussions are becoming a major problem in sports today and especially in the National Football League. A concussion is when a blow to the head causes the brain to flood with chemicals and deadening certain receptors linked to learning and memory. Symptoms include headache, confusion, blurred vision, nausea, and unconsciousness. Once a player suffers a concussion, he is four times more likely to sustain a second. A study by University of North Carolina revealed that of 595 retired players who recalled sustaining three or more concussions, 20.2% said they have been found dealing with depression. That is three times the rate of players who have not sustained concussions. Also, Alzheimer’s disease has been diagnosed in former NFL players 19 times the rate of normal men 30-49. In December of 2009, the league announced that it would impose stricter policies with regard to concussions. NFL teams now place posters in each locker room about the permanent dangers concussions can have even if treated properly. Stricter policies must be put it place to ensure the safety of these athletes and make sure they live long healthy lives after their playing days are over.
Joe Paterno is well into his eighties and still coaching the Penn State Football Team. Many seem to think he is doing a good job but this article thinks its time to step aside. Yes his team won a big ten title in 2005 but that was the only year they finished in the top four in the big ten in ten years. The biggest issue with most folks is Paterno on the recruiting process and the future of the program. Do recruits really want to commit to a program where they know there is not much future for the legendary coach, and Paterno does not even make trips anymore, which doesn’t help out either. Many people think Paterno should step aside and should be forced to leave, but it has harder than it seems. This man has put this University on the map by building a football powerhouse. He as also given so much and even given millions of dollars for a library that is named after him. So this man should be allowed to coach here until he is ready to throw in the towel.
The BCS has caused controversy for many years but the debate has been heated the last couple of years at the expense of teams like TCU and Boise State having undefeated seasons and even beating major BCS schools. Computers shouldn’t be deciding who should be playing for the national championship. The BCS presents a major problem, because even if a team loses one game, their title hopes are pretty much shot and that is complete bullshit. Just because South Carolina beat Alabama, does the mean Alabama still isn’t one of the best teams in the land. Another thing, we will never see a team like Boise or TCU play for the national title. Could you imagine the buzz and tv ratings we would see if a team like that made a run through a playoff system. And that is what the BCS is about, money and ratings. It also hurts the game because fans and players are so distraught after one loss because reality has set in that they have virtually no shot at playing for all the marbles. College football is a fans and players game. GIVE THEM WHAT THEY WANT
Penn State Uniforms
Black shoes, basic blues, no names all game. WE ARE PENN STATE. A common phrase describing the uniforms of the Penn State football team. The plain uniform of Penn State is one of the most recognizable uniforms in all of sports. The all white uniforms are sure a thing of beauty and have been voted in the top five best uniforms in college football multiple times. These new aged nike pro combat uniforms will never replace the uniform that has been the trademark of this program and its legendary coach. Legend after legend has put on the plain no named uniform and have had nothing but success. Five undefeated seasons, and two national championships. Who needs the flash of the new aged uni’s.
Oregon Ducks
That god awful yellow, grey, white green, black. You name the color, Oregon wears it proudly on a football Saturday. Showing off a new variation of their uniforms every week, the Ducks of Oregon represent the flash and swag that they play with. Unlinke Penn State Oregon rocks a new uniform every weeks and come out with a new design almost every year. With the backing and funding of Nike Chairman Phil Knight, the Ducks can continue to surprise the football world with their interesting and colorful uniforms.
Iphone 4G vs. The Droid x
There is no doubt that the battle between the iphone 4 generation and the droid x is probably the greatest technology of our time and maybe ever. Motorola is releasing this phone soon and many believe it is the best Iphone competitor yet. This debate has merit and needs evaluation because of the reputation these phones have and the major breakthroughs in technology they represent. To start, The droid has a much bigger screen than the Iphone, but does that necessarily mean it it better. No it doesn’t because the iphone uses Reitna display technology, which mean it has a higher resolution and is easier to see in the sun and other bright areas than other smart phones including the droid x. Iphone is available on the AT & T network, which is to be believed to be the fastest 3G network, but has iphone 4 traffic and slows down the phone and hurts reception. While the droid is on the Verizon network and is the largest 3G network. The droid also wins the category of storage with 24 GB of storage while the ipohne only has 16 GB. Both run at the same price of $200. The iphone and the droid both have 3G and wireless internet, but it is believed that Iphone software has a faster wireless connection. The iphone clearly wins the battle of cameras because it has a front facing cameras which allows a person to skype directly from their iphone which I think is absolutely ridiculous. The iphone has the most impressive battery life for any smart phone. Apple states the ihphone can get 7 hours of 3g talk, 6 hours of 3G browsing, 10 hours of WiFi browsing, 10 hours of video, 40 hours of music and 300 hours of standby. Verizon or Motorola has not stated ant specific battery life for the droid, so it is pretty obvious which phones wins the category for battery. The Iphone is the thinnest smart phone in the world while the droid is much bigger in size and who wants to walk around with a big ass phone in their pocket. Both phones have gps systems and many applications for radio and the iphone has an app for xm radio and the droid does not. The iphone has 200,000 applications to the droid x’s 70,000, but the droid is much newer than apple so that number is increasing over time. So the big question is which phone is better for users. The droid is the number one phone in America now, but is that only because Verizon is a much larger network. What if the iphone came to Verizon, would more people switch over to the iphone and forget about using the droid. Apple software is unbelievable and they make new advances every day, even if they fall behind the droid, they will come up with something better. They always seem to.
For my investigative report I decided to get to the bottom of underage drinking in the pollock dorm residence. Whats the big attraction and why people do it?
The pollock dorm complex is very close to downtown and right next to south halls. It is very easy for kids to transport alcohol from downtown to the dorm rooms and never be seen. Also, all the sororities are locates in these two dorm complexes, so does that mean more drinking goes on here than other dorms like east and west? Most of the pollock dorm rooms are rearranged so that there is a lot of space. the beds are perpendicular and both desks are against the wall, so the middle of the room is very wide open. There is a lot of room to have people in the rooms and even room to put other furniture like small chairs for when people come over. Also, the closets are on opposite sides of the room from one another. It is not a hard thing to hide alcohol in these rooms and the RA would never know where it was. From in the closet right behind the door to under the bed in the front corner of the room, you could get away with hiding a lot of alcohol and other things in these rooms.
I interviewed many people that I know in the building, who know people or who have had first hand experience drinking in their rooms. Mick, a 19 year old freshman who lives on the sixth floor said,
“I watched people drink in their rooms first hand, they always keep the door locked and are very cautious about the noise level and if the RA is around.” Becky, an eighteen year old freshman, who lives on the fifth floor of Mifflin hall mentioned:
“I have kept alcohol in my room before. I kept it in the freezer and locked my door at all costs, even if I was just going down the hall.” My good friend Tom, who is also a freshman, lives across the lawn in porter hall. The first weekend we were here he texted me saying,
“A kid down the hall just got caught with alcohol cause he was carrying around the hallway, what a dumb ass.”
I was reading the policies of Pollock commons and my building does not allow alcohol in the dorms no matter if you are of legal age, so it is illegal. Also, two hundred students have been cited for alcohol in residence halls during the schools first two weeks (Pittsburgh Tribune Review). I talked to my “floor keeper Shaunee, who takes the trash out and cleans the bathrooms and she said she notices many different types of alcohol in the garbage cans, and notes she sees a lot of four locos. After taking a look at the policies, it is legal to drink if you are twenty one only in non first year dorms.
One thing i did stumble upon is that all the different sororities in the pollock commons and i feel as if I need to investigate that and see if they drink in their dorm rooms at all. Another Thing I feel I need to do is interview some of the house coordinators and see what their take is and what can the eventual consequences be. Also, have they ever caught anyone themselves and what are the RA’s trained to do in a situation where they see alcohol in a room.
After listening to the Radio broadcast on Penn State being the number one party school, I have many opinions on the piece. First, I am going to analyze the investigative report. The reporter does do a very nice job of identifying the problem and makes it listenable to many audiences across the country. They give many reasons including: The death some students the had previously gone to school and drank too much in one night. Also, they do a very good of interviewing on duty police officers to tell their own experiences and how it easy it is to cite kids for underage drinking and public urination. They give good data like the number of citations in a weekend, so it should make kids more aware how easy it is to be arrested and how kids should be smarter if they are going to drink. The radio broadcast is very straight forward and clear, but it does give details on how this affects different groups. One example that they use is how mostly boys will get drunk and break into a house and fall asleep there. Also, how flirtation increases at frat parties with the presence of alcohol. I have to give them credit for doing good investigative work, but I am not overly thrilled with it.
This piece gets quotes from many students and even quotes President Spanier on the issue of binge drinking. Also, many officers were quoted as I already mentioned. This is good, because there a perspective from almost every angle, so they at least tried to not make the report one sided. The main conclusion is really not to binge drink and they give the example of Jeff Dato, and how he was alone. The main idea behind that was that if he was with other people, he might have never jumped off the building and died. It was a strong conclusion that made me think.
In my opinion, I thought this piece was complete bull shit. They made it seem like that Penn State is a horrible place to live if you have family. They pretty much said that all students do hear is drink. They never mentioned one thing on how high this University ranks in certain categories for academics. They could have said even though it is the number one party school, it still ranks high in several academic categories, but no all they say is PARTY PARTY PARTY! I would like to have a little talk to the person who made all these interviews and made this broadcast. One quote i thought would have been good is from a professor or two. I would be very curios to hear their take on the issue, and I think that would make the report even stronger and more appealing. I would have like to hear more of the students too, but not when they are drunk. The person interviewing should have talked to students during the week to see what they thought on the issue.
After reading The excerpt from Anne Lamott’s book of the chapter “Shitty First Drafts,” I can reflect off of what she is saying and relate it to my own writing process that I do. I think Lamott is saying that writing a first draft is more about the process than the product, but I do have to disagree with her in some aspect. I usually only do two drafts, so i try to do as best as i can on my first draft. But other times I am just looking to get a start and get something down on paper, so i do in some ways write a Shitty First Draft. My favorite thing i like to do is write a few sentences or a paragraph then go back and read it to make sure it makes sense before i go on with the rest of my paper.The main thing i can relate to in the writing is when i first sit down at my computer I do a million other things first and get distracted very easily. I will also get and walk around the room maybe get something to eat, so it always takes me a while to get started on something. Then when i finally do sit down, I get in the “zone” and just start typing away. Another problem i run into is in the middle of my first draft. A lot of times i will get stuck and then i will do more un productive stuff like surf the web, read the paper, or watch some television. So alot of the time it takes me a long time to get a first draft done. I also agree in the way if you do type something that is too long, there is always something good in that writing that you can take in use when you start doing a second or third draft, so something good always can come out of something you write.
Recently when i wrote my personal narrative i stumbled upon this problem of writing a first draft. Like Lamott i took notes on what i wanted to talk about and eventually sat down to write my draft. After getting distracted by many pointless things around, I finally got started on my draft. Like I said before i wrote my intro then went back and fixed it and continued that process. So it is kinda like writing a shitty first draft, but i just like doing it piece by piece instead of the whole paper at once. This made my story stronger, because it forces you to put more time into the writing you are doing and try different styles and formats, so overall it helps the paper dramatically. Like Lamott, a lot of the times i will edit my paper myself, but since we were doing a peer review in class, i opted not to until after the exercise, because i wanted to see what my partner had to say about my paper.
In David Giffels “Shirt Worthy” he takes advantage of a rhetorical situation and uses many elements of the situation to solve the exigence. He gives a very strong introduction with a lot of background of the situation and tells a little anecdote to grab our attention of his own memoir. Then he begins into the body of his story by telling us the story of how worthy one needs to be to get a Ramones shirt. He continues to tell us how he had children and for his son’s tenth birthday, he asked his father for a Ramones shirt. He also says how things have changed, because he mentions how a store like hot topic contains things that used to be based on a value system and now he no longer thinks about it. My favorite part of the whole memoir is when his son rips the shirt and the other man says “you just made it better.” That brings the story into his conclusion by saying how rock n roll paraphernalia had to be hard-worn based off of personal experience. I think the point of this story is to tell all his experiences he went through by going to shows and finally becoming “shirt worthy.”
The subject of this story is the author telling us his journey to getting shirt. I believe his audience is fans of rock and who have had similar experiences as the author has. i think this is so, because he mentions how there used to be a value system of shirts like that and when his one friend said how the kid made it better by ripping it. The story is relevant since there is an exigence of he wants to be worthy of a Ramones shirt and he eventually solves the problem.
Giffels develops a fitting response very well to this story, because he targets the right audience and delivers a good message thats easy to interpret into the meaning of the story. The best thing i think he does is use rhetorical appeals very well; especially ethos and pathos. He uses ethos in saying he believed he needed to be worthy to have a Ramones shirt and was ok in not having one for a while. And pathos, because at the end of the story he makes the audience feel happy for him since he finally got the shirt after a long time wanting one. I would love be able to use rhetorical appeals like Giffels did in “Shirt Worry.”
