Abdul Jabbar's 'College Athletes Of The World, Unite'

Rhetorical strategies that will be discussed in this text are logos and pathos which will help make the author’s argument credible. Basketball legend Kareem Abdul Jabar in his text “College Athletes of the World, Unite,” argues that college athletes get exploited. He supports his argument by giving examples of his own experiences, providing numbers that make his argument credible, and by making some type of comparisons to explain his reasoning. Jabar’s purpose is to inform people the value of a college athlete in order for the athletes’ to “bring an end to the indentured servitude of college athletes and start paying them what they are worth.” He adopts an irritated/pitiful tone for his audience, the readers of Jacobin. In order to understand where Jabar’s point of view of exploitation is coming from, Jabar uses logos. He describes logic when he says that there is a huge amount of money made in sports for the colleges but strongly affirms that the athletes are ones that get the least, even though these players are risking their careers when they step on to the court. Jabar asserts that the NCAA(The National Collegiate Athletic Association) “earns at least $1 billion dollars from
Based on the rhetorical strategies that I have analyzed, I found Jabbar’s logic precise because he explained a large amount of money that was being generated towards the college and not a lot towards the student athlete. The emotion he expressed was effective because I felt empathy, I felt despairing and anger emotions as he explained the example of the cambodian girls working long hours for low wages. As I discussed the effectiveness of logos and pathos in this passage, I conclude that reasoning as well as expressing emotion is essential in order to make the point of exploitation that Jabbar