The football team from Mountain View High School won the Arizona State Championship last year. Again. Unbeknownst to the vast majority of the school’s student body, so did the Science Bowl Team, the Speech and Debate Team, and the Academic Decathlon team. The football players enjoyed the attentions of an enthralled school, complete with banners, assemblies, and even video announcements in their honor, a virtual barrage of praise and downright deification . As for the three champion academic teams, they received a combined total of around ten minutes of recognition, tacked onto the beginning of a sports assembly. Nearly all of the graduating seniors will remember the name and escapades of their star quarterback; nearly none of them will ever even realize that their class produced Arizona’s first national champion in Lincoln-Douglass Debate. After all, why should they? He and his teammates were “just the nerds.”…
Expectation: I expect to see a lot of personal experiences from the author. I feel that he will reflect on what he went through in college or what he saw in college. I also expect to see that there is no real “cure” to binging, but he will explain a few ways to help quell the problem.…
Focusing on the actions by the college athletes involved in this article, they apparently needed to have sufficient grades to be eligible to play in “bowl games” for their sports. Some of those who were lacking academically, but still wished to compete in the bowls, looked for an “easy out.” They found this easy out in the form of schools offering online classes which only lasted 10 days. These courses didn’t provide much substance or learning for the students, however they did get the student athletes an “easy A” so that they would be academically qualified for bowl games.…
Its 6am Saturday morning, the parking lot is vacant. Staring down the road you see a line of cars as they file in one after another. By 9 o’clock the sweet aroma of ribs, burgers and hot dogs permeate the air. Friends, families and strangers alike tremble in the anticipation of Game Day. Though there are hundreds of college football programs, there is no better game day experience than that of The University of Southern California Trojans.…
Robert Robinson, a thirty year old social worker at a home for troubled youth, has lived a difficult life and overcome many obstacles to get where he is. Raised in a lower income community in Miramar, FL., the concept of college was a faraway dream. In high school his main focus was to play football. He said “2 years of hard work and my grades were good enough to play, finally.” Robert’s goals were to complete high school, go to a 4year college, and go onto D1 football then the NFL. Robert experienced many struggles on his way to college. He underestimated his educational capabilities not knowing what he wanted to do, or if he could get good enough scores to make his dreams come true.…
In the months after his high school graduation, Mark was sent off to Central College in Pella, Iowa. There, he participated in football and got a job outside of his studies. To support himself, Mark worked as a manager at Pizza Hut for all four years he attended school. When I asked about his life as an undergrad, he told me going off to college provided some of the best years of his life. However, having to show up to every practice and event for football while trying to hold down a job and pay tuition proved to be more challenging he expected. Two years after he arrived, Mark decided to retire from the Central College team and transfer to the University of Iowa, home of the black and gold. In the course of this transition, Mark learned how to pay bills, take money, and balance his time accordingly. After his graduation in 1985, Mark was hired to become a head football and baseball coach at a high school in Ventura,…
Passion is sought after in all sports, and is the most apparent in college athletics. Money determines everything in pro football and the large impact it has is just too obvious. The same cannot be said for college football. The great passion and emotion seen in players and coaches, and their loyalty to their team helps make college football a lovable game. The football team at a university represents the town, the state, and what the community stands for. College football players are said to be passionate, play hard, hard workers, and fearless. NFL players are most known for complaining and not wanting to be hit hard. There is passion in every play and…
Back in my high school years, one of my good friends, Anthony Wilkerson, had earned a full-ride scholarship to Stanford University, thanks to his solid GPA and superior skills on the football field. He had been on the bench for most of his freshman season, but this year, he was set to get more carries, more yards and, hopefully, more touchdowns. My girlfriend had a close friend, named Karen, who was accepted into the University of Southern California. Ever since she received her acceptance letter, Karen vowed to invite us to go see a game at the Coliseum with her. As fate would have it, that same year, Stanford and USC were set to square off in Los Angeles! It was as if the universe had aligned itself perfectly for me. The College Football Gods had sown the seeds and I was about to reap from the glorious harvest.…
2. Everyone suffers as a freshman. Unproductive upperclassmen take this experience and attempt to get revenge for their experience by unjustly punishing their charges. A good and just upperclassman takes his experiences as a freshman and shaping their leadership off of hard but fair role models.…
a. Opening statements: Playoff time, it is something that stirs excitement among fans of almost any sport, it is what teams play for all season, and it is perhaps the most exciting time of any sport season. But this exicitement is something that has always been missing in Division I football, and it is something that makes the game unfair for many teams. At the beginning of the season all teams join the hunt for the coveted national championship, they face many roadblocks, some of which have nothing to do with their opponents. Did you realize that a team can win every single game and still fall short of getting into the national title game? Or did you realize that destiny lies in the hands of voters and computers?…
The perception of many student-athletes on college campuses, especially those in revenue-producing sports such as basketball and football, is that they are Athlete-Students rather than Student-Athletes. In most Division One universities special academic support facilities and resources are available to athletes participating in intercollegiate athletics. Most schools spend millions of dollars on facilities and support staffs to provide student athletes with the necessary assistance to help keep them eligible.…
In the stories, “The Lie,” by Kurt Vonnegut and “Barn Burning,” by William Faulkner, the main characters mature from childhood into adulthood. This maturity either develops from support of one’s family and upbringing or it grows internally from one’s conscience. We see from both stories that the main characters use this maturity to courageously speak up.…
These results can be analyzed and interpreted using Tinto’s Interactional Theory of college student retention. Simply put, successful football programs and the resulting higher football attendance rates lead to a more socially integrated student body (Jones, 2010, p. 560). With students making up a majority of the increased number of spectators, a sense of togetherness begins to develop and eventually spreads throughout the student body. As Jones (2010) articulated, “Many sports sociologists point out that this increased congregation and student interaction during football games has the ability to foster a collective sense of identity and commitment to the university (p.560).” This collective commitment and sense of identity is vital to social…
It is hard to be a college student. You have many responsibilities and it takes up so much time. College is basically a job with the amount of hours you have to put in each day to do your work to the best of your ability! Now just imagine adding a second job to that. This job not only requires mental awareness, but also takes physical strength that not many people can fathom. In this essay I will talk about the positive effects of being a collegiate athlete.…
College Intramurals activities emphasize group spirit and the enjoyment of sports in a less competitive context. Through sports participation this seeks to promote wellness, to encourage the wise use of leisure time, to improve self-esteem, to stimulate other interests, and to provide students the opportunity to achieve individual and team goals. While developing a sense of sportsmanship and fair play, they acquire knowledge and skills required for the future.…