Paying Student Athletes

This piece of static visual rhetoric is a chart showing the difference in the amount of money in the salary of a head football coach vs. the total amount of scholarship money for that team, revenue from NCAA March Madness (3 weeks) vs. NBA annual revenue (6 months), and salary of college basketball coach vs. salary of same coach when he was in NBA as a president and head coach. The amount of money immediately stands out and you have to look closer to see what they money figures actually represent.  The purpose of this image is to show just how much is involved with collegiate sports and to show that there is a good reason to pay college athletes. If college athletes in the NCAA March Madness tournament bring in $770 million in a three week time span and professional athletes in the NBA bring in $930 million in an entire 6 month season, don’t you think they deserved to be paid? This also show how much these college athletes are being exploited. They are doing all the hard work yet coaches and universities are the one's benefiting by making millions off of them. 

Paying College Athletes

The research topic I have chosen to do my research paper over is I believe that NCAA student athletes have the right to make money off of themselves by selling memorabilia or accepting donations from willing fans. I don’t believe that they should be paid by the university. A scholarly article I have located is found at this website. The process I went through in order to determine that this is a scholarly article is I first noticed that there was an abstract to start off the article. There are two authors of this article and one of them has a Ph.D while the other has an Ed.D. This shows that the authors aren't just random sports fans, but they are very intelligent people. Throughout the article there aren't any pictures to be found and the article ends with a list of references. With all of this evidence, I determined that this is a scholarly article. The article begins with an introduction on why the athletes should not be paid and then goes on to give five points about why they shouldn't be paid. Then the article introduces the idea that athletes should be paid and gives 3 reasons why and proposes some different plans on how to pay the players. The five points against paying the athletes are education is money, there are problems with the payment, the university offers more than an education, the athletic department has its role, and athletes know the deal. The three points for paying players are athletic scholarships provide a “free education” is not correct, athletes don’t know the “real” deal, and the university offer more than education – it’s possible – but not probable. The article also included four proposals on methods to pay the players such as giving them a base pay, paying them based off of time played, hiring them as athletes, and giving them revenue from TV networks. The article concludes by stating that if college sports continue to go the way they are going, then paying athletes is something that needs to strongly be considered. Overall, the article conveys a successful rhetorical message by appealing to ethos. The article states both sides of the story so it is very easy to trust the authors. 

Father's

A harsh reality of our culture in America today is that father's seem to not be present or have somehow abused their children. This reality is a devastating reality. The effects of a child not having a father are tremendous and can haunt a person for the rest of their lives. According to fatherhood.about.com, children who are fatherless make up 63% of suicides, 85% of behavioral disorders, 71% of high school drop outs, and 70% of the population in juvenile detention centers. These are staggering statistics and something needs to be done about this. If the men of this generation stood up and became the father’s that they should be then there would not nearly be enough problems and evil that we see in our society today. An encounter I had with this came from this summer when I worked at Sky Ranch Christian Camps this summer. We had a week where they brought in inner city kids from Dallas and allowed them to come for free. The last night there we had a campfire and allowed the kids to share what they had learned that week. The next hour or so I saw some of the most broken kids I have ever seen in my life and it was one of the saddest experiences I have seen in my life. I was devastated to see how hurt these kids were and probably 90% of their hurt came from not having a father figure in their life. Dads are so important to young kids and our culture has them watching sports and working late hours everyday which is not what they are created to do. Men need to rise up and be there for their children. Another negative effect of not having a good father figure in your life is that it gives someone a false  perception of God as their Father. Knowing the Father heart of God can completely change someones life. When you come to know that God is your heavenly father who loves you with an unconditional love and who can only give good gifts to His children, it will change your life forever. Coming into that revelation is so sweet and knowing the identity as a son of the Most High King is amazing! God is a good father who is a far better than even the best of dads out there.  

Heroes

The discussion on “heroes” in class on Monday was really interesting to me. The book described heroes not as a spectacular person, but more of an ordinary person doing their jobs day in and day out that we often times take for granted. This thought of a hero as an ordinary person really got me thinking. With this definition, we can all be heroes to somebody. Everyone is important. If one person influences thousands of people and if another person only has an influence on one person in their whole life I think that they are equally as important. As long as someone is faithful and diligent with what they do, they should be recognized as a hero. Our culture today often times praises one person over another just because they have a bigger impact than the other, but I don’t think this is right. For example, let’s say that you tell one person about Jesus and they accept Him in their heart as their Lord and Savior, but that’s the only person you lead to Christ. Then, that one person ends up being a world changing revivalists who leads millions to Jesus and ushers in the second coming of Christ. At first thought, you would think that the second person is more important than the first. However, without the first person the second person never would have known about Jesus. This shows that not one person is more important. We should start celebrating the people who aren't necessarily at the top of the chain because we don’t know where we would be without them. 

Struggles in HS English

In high school I took two different AP English courses. My junior year I was enrolled in AP English Language and Composition and my senior year I was enrolled in AP English Literature and Composition. My experiences in these two classes turned out to be very different. I ended up passing the AP test my junior year, but not my senior year, but that was not where the differences stop. My junior year I really felt as though I had a good understanding of what was expected of me in regards to writing essays. This allowed me to put forth my best work and was even enjoyable (as enjoyable as writing an essay can be). However, my senior year things were much different. We were required to analyze poems, essays, or novels and write some sort of an analysis essay about them. Although I had developed good writing skills, they did not show up in this class. It was extremely hard for me to write an analysis essay; my brain just doesn't work that way (which is why I am a math major). I knew exactly what was expected of me, but I simply could not perform at the necessary level. This was actually really frustrating for me. I don’t feel like I was taught how to properly analyze a text and based off of that analysis write an entire essay. This reflected in my essays and ultimately on final AP score. Although this affected my AP score, I don’t think this had much of an effect on my development as a writer. I know that I can write; I just couldn't analyze properly in order to write an adequate essay. Hopefully, I won’t ever have to analyze a text and write an essay based off of that again!

My Changing Culture

This past Tuesday, I and four friends decided to pile in to my little Honda Civic and head to San Antonio to see go to a church service with a guest speaker and worship leader. The guest speaker was Corey Russell. He is one of the main pastors at IHOP (International House of Prayer) in Kansas City, MO, and I love listening to him preach. This past Christmas break I went to Kansas City to a conference and his sermons was definitely one of my favorites. Rick Pino was the worship leader and although I have never heard him lead worship, I was very excited to worship with him because I have heard great things about him. While driving the three hour drive to San Antonio I was sitting there thinking that my friends and I are a little crazy in the head. We were willing to drive six total hours, get home around three in the morning, and have to turn around and go to class the next morning, just to go to a two hour church service. This thought brought me back to how in high school I would drive three hours just to go see our football team play a game or another sporting event. When I did that I never once thought I was going crazy, but why would I think such a thought when going to worship God? It’s because our culture thinks it isn’t worth it. You can go all out and look like a crazy person for a sporting event, but if you worship and love Jesus with the same enthusiasm you are considered to be crazy. The thing is, is that it was totally worth it! God met my friends and I in a powerful way that night and I would totally do that all over again. It’s really cool that my culture is changing to where I use to drive and do crazy things for sports, but now I am doing that for Jesus and it is so much more worth it and life giving! Have you noticed little culture changes in your life since coming to college?   

Storytelling: For or Against

The past couple of weeks we have talked and reminisced upon storytelling. In class, Dr. Melzow has asked us multiple times to think of stories that our parents told us when we were younger. Each time she has asked us to do this I find myself drawing blanks. I simply can’t remember anything my parents might have told me. Upon further thinking, I really don’t think my parents told me stories or urban legends to scare me into being careful about things and for this I am extremely thankful. I personal did not enjoy reading any of the urban legends that we read in “Reading Culture” this week and I am a college student. There is no way that I would ever tell my kids some of those stories. This isn’t coming from an overprotective mindset or outlook on life, but rather was mindset that I want my kids to have pure minds and thoughts. These stories are evil and why should I bring evil into my kid’s minds? If I don’t want my kids to do something, I will simply tell them why they shouldn’t do something or go somewhere and will give them a clear vision on why I am asking them of that. Then, they will see where I am coming from and will know that I only want what is best for them. I would much rather speak truth and give reasoning than to scare someone into believing what I am saying. Do you agree with or do you think this is being a little extreme?