Over the course of this semester I really have enjoyed Sport
and Gender. I thought our class was the perfect size to have a lot of good
discussions where everyone felt comfortable voicing their own opinion. Usually
people do not say what is on their mind in class, but I thought everyone
weighed in and gave different views on a variety of topics. My favorite topic
that we talked about was the Jordan Effect. I feel that a lot of people know
Michael Jordan, but do not look beyond his basketball career. If anything, I
think MJ is just as good of a businessman as a basketball player. It is good to
see an athlete not blow millions of dollars and file for bankruptcy two years after
their playing career (Allen Iverson). I also liked the debate about the entire
topic of gay athletes and find extremely ironic that a NBA player came out
today. Jason Collins, 34 year old NBA free agent just told Sports Illustrated
today that he is gay. If you ask me, I could not think of a worse time for
Collins to come out. He is a 34 year old center who is currently a free agent.
I think it is going to be extremely interesting to see if anyone in the NBA
will sign him now. Owners can easily use the excuse that he is too old when
really they just do not want to deal with the publicity they would receive from
everywhere the team traveled.
Once again, this was a very interesting class and good luck
to everyone in their future endeavors.
-Taylor Redd
Conclusion
I
would have to say that some of my favorite aspects about this semester were the
in class discussions that we had. Never before have I been in a class, were the
group discussions were so intriguing to listen to throughout the semester. As a
result, I believed this helped me retain information about the topics
that we went over this semester. Another aspect that I enjoyed about the class
was all the blogs that we did each week. I thought there was numerous times
throughout the semester where students did a really good job of starting
debates with current issues happening in sports. By doing these blogs
throughout the semester, I was able to gather more intel from students and see different
sides of arguments from students within the class. From this class I was able
to learn about the problems that exist within sports for gender equality, sexual orientation,
and the impacts that sports has on society. I think one of my favorite readings
this semester was "Cool Pose" by Majors. The reason why I loved this
reading was due to the statistics it revealed about black male athletes.
Before, ever reading this article I had never thought about the social status
of athletes and how it can be limited by sports. Or be a way of expressing
behaviors, attitudes, speech, or gestures within sports. The last aspect
that I loved about this semester was our final group presentations. I thought
the presentation that my group did about the difference in pay between genders
in sports was intriguing. I knew heading into our final presentation that women
did not make as much money or get paid equally as men in any sport. Until our final presentation revealed that women and men are equally paid in tennis.
On Friday I attended a presentation by Dr. Cho’s graduate
class on the Rooney Rule. The Rooney Rule is a regulation by the league that
was created to make sure that minority coaches were considered for head
coaching positions. Basically, the rule requires teams to interview a minority
candidate for any head coaching or GM position vacancy. As they talked about in
the presentation, prior to 2006 only 8 minority head coaches were hired in the
NFL which is absolutely ridiculous in my opinion. With so few minorities being
hired, the candidates started to question more and more about why they weren’t
getting jobs. Once they came up with the conclusion that it might have been due
to race, the NFL decided to implement what became known as the Rooney Rule in
2006 to avoid class-action suits. Since the Rooney Rule was put in action, the
overall percentage of minority coaches jumped to around 22% in 2006. Although
it seemed like the Rooney Rule was going to do some good things, more recently,
at the end of last year’s football season, no minority coaches or general
managers were hired to fill the 15 vacancies that became available. After
hearing that, I personally believe that some of the owner’s that hire these
head coaches and gm’s are racist. I don’t know how 15 different positions can
become available and not one minority coach is qualified enough to fill that
role. If I was the gm and my best candidate for the position was I minority, I certainly
would choose the minority over the less qualified Caucasian. My beliefs are, no
matter what race, religion, gender, etc you are, if you’re the best person
available for the job then you will get it. With this being said, I feel like
the NFL teams are just interviewing minority coaches in order to just comply
with the rule and not get in trouble. I think that is totally wrong and some
changes should be made to make the rule better and even more fair for minority
coaches. The graduate class proposed 4 different options to try and make the
rule better, but the ones that I liked the best were proposal #1 and #4. If #1
was to be enacted then teams would have to explain why the specific minority
coach was selected for an interview with the team. Also, after the interview
took place, if the minority candidate was not chosen, the team would have to
explain why he was not selected. I like this idea because it makes the NFL
teams explain why exactly he was chosen for an interview and if he doesn’t end
up getting chosen, then teams also have to say why and not just assume it was
because of race. This could help eliminate those random interviews with
minorities just to meet the requirements of the league and to not really care
in hiring a minority coach if that is truly the reason. Lastly, the other
proposal I liked was have a consulting group that works alongside the NFL
owners to provide them with a list of candidates to interview. I like this idea,
because it tells the teams what coaches they have to interview because they
would fit their style of play or game plans. This proposal again helps to
eliminate random interviews just to fulfill the leagues rules and not get fined
or punished.
1.Be able to define and give examples of various types of
racism discussed in this article (e.g., “scientific,” “cultural,” and
“commodity”). In addition, what is meant by “sincere fictions” and how do they
operate?
Scientific racism – using scientific ways like craniometry
(measurement of skull size) and phernology (belief studying the conformation
of skull size enable measurement of mental capacity).
Ethnic minorities are on
average less intelligent than whites
Cultural racism – racism judged
based on language, dress, musical preference, sporting identifications and
religion.
Commodity racism – products
sold through illustrations of colonial conquest and slave trading on
commercial goods.
Sincere fictions – personal ideological constructions that
reproduce societal mythologies at the individual level. White individuals
usually see themselves as “not racist,” as “good people.”
2.Based upon the experiences of the Williams sisters at
Indian Wells in 2001, do you believe they should return to Indian Wells? Be
able to explain why or why not.
I do not think that they will return until they get an apology.
They did not deserve to be treated so badly. If the same situation
happened to a white player, nothing close to this would have happened. It
is good that they are not planning to go back because that shows pride.
They are showing everyone that they should be treated equally and with
respect.
My favorite part of this semester in Sport and Gender class
was all of the great discussions we had as a class. The discussions were my favorite part because
it gave me the opportunity to hear other peoples’ opinions on controversial
topics. Often times, professors stand in
front of the class and lecture without ever opening the class up to
discussion. I greatly benefitted from
the in class discussions because some of the opinions of my classmates were
informative. Another awesome part of the
in class discussions was hearing the personal stories from Dr. Spencer and the
rest of the students in the class. As a
result, I feel like I gained knowledge about certain issues that I will be able
to use in the future. I could go on and
on about how much I enjoyed the in class discussions, but I will just add one
final thing. The in class discussions
show how diverse a class is. I remember
in our class we had someone who read bodybuilding magazines, while the rest of
the class didn’t. One of the funniest
moments from class this semester was when Dr. Spencer thought the writing on
the board was Japanese, but Marcus corrected her and said it was Chinese. When Dr. Spencer has the in class discussions
it’s almost like everyone in the class is teacher, and that is what I enjoyed
the most, and where I feel I learned the most.
All of the readings from class offered a ton of useful information. “Cool Pose” and the article about Kobe Bryant
both offered great information about the way black male athletes are viewed in
America. I also enjoyed doing the
presentation. I had a great group who
was willing to step outside the box and do a “mock draft” presentation. My entire group bought into the idea and I
feel Josh, Marcus, and Anthony did incredibly well.
All of the other presentations were also informative. I liked learning about the women in extreme
sports, as well as the payment differences in the major sports. it was interesting to see how much different
tennis is! I want to be a football coach,
so I feel like all of the information in this class was useful. Imagine this, 20 years from now I could have
a player that is gay that is thinking about coming out. This class informed me about the possible actions
I could take as a coach. Honestly, other
majors should be required to take this class!
Business majors could greatly benefit from the information in this
class.
Going into this class, I did not have much excitement about the class because I thought I wasn’t interested in gender differences in sport. But what made this class great were our discussions and readings about topics that get little to no attention in sports. For example, I have never even heard of the Indian Wells Tournament until it was discussed in class. This is surprising because the incident surrounding that 2001 tournament involved the two biggest stars in tennis.
What I found most useful was the discussions and blogs. The discussions was perhaps my favorite aspect of any of my college courses because we all had different ideas on certain situations and we all had reasons to back it up. I loved how during the first week of classes, Dr. Spencer made the class feel comfortable talking to each other about deep issues in sport and gender. The blogs have given me an opportunity to express my thoughts on issues that should be covered more by the media. I also love the responses to the blogs because everyone won’t agree with you and they will give you reasons to not agree with you. Until I took this class, I had trouble with people disagreeing with my points, but I grew up mentally thanks to these assignments.
The topic that stood out to me is gays in professional sport. Ironically, two major events in relation to this topic took place during this semester; Manti Te’o’s made-up girlfriend after the BCS National Championship game and Brittney Griner coming out as gay publicly after the WNBA Draft. There comes a point in society when it just becomes time to take the next step in societal progress. We have made small steps in gay acceptance in sport, but for every step forward with UCLA’s “You can play” campaign, there is a step back with the Chris Culliver comments.
This was why my group decided to perform a skit in class featuring a made-up player (Trinidad James) who just “came out” after the college football season, risking his opportunity of gaining a top draft pick. Personally, it was tough to play the homophobic General Manager during the presentation. However, I used to be one of the homophobic people who couldn’t stand gay people until I came to college and gained true knowledge about how gays are just like the rest of us. American sports (especially football) need a notable gay player to “come out” because only then will the sports culture and society learn that gays are truly equal, even in sports.
Finally, there are a few things I will take from this class. First, the amount of sports discussion that we had in this class has made this class one of my favorites here in college. Secondly, the blogs have help me in my other activities including the Maxwell Project, SMA, and other future activities such as resuming my online radio show in May.
The final thing I will take from this class is the most important because it might have changed my life. Dr. Spencer made a speech in class about helping out with getting Billie Jean King here in BGSU. The speech was about taking a chance on an opportunity even when the odds are against you. It hit me that I needed to do something that would make me stand out from the pack even if I’m somewhat out of my element. I strongly encourage everyone to get involved with this project because every idea, resource, and dollar matters. The more people we have, the better. We have the golden opportunity to enhance our university to higher status and make our Sport Management Program the top program in the country and it will be us who made it happen. Think about it! I have enjoyed taking this class with Dr. Spencer and Kara and I will remember the great times we had in this class for a long time.
Overall, I really enjoyed taking this class. I took this class for enjoyment due to having all of my required courses already completed to be set to graduate next week. This honestly was one of my favorite classes because I actually enjoyed the topics that we discussed. I liked how he talked about the history of events in sport but we also discussed recent sports news that was happening today. I am a sports fanatic and always stay up to date with what is going on (thanks to twitter) but it was nice to hear what others have to say about different topics and there was even some news that I didn't even hear about yet. That was really cool.
I also enjoyed how we got to choose if we wanted to do a blog or a journal. I chose to do a blog because I had never done a blog before and wanted to see what it was like. I actually really enjoyed doing a blog each week and seeing what others had to say about different topics as well. As a result, I now have my own fitness blog that I post on weekly and I have this class to thank for that!
Some of the discussions in class I wasn't even aware of. In the beginning of the semester when we talked about Caster Semenya, I didn't even know who she was! Which was crazy, because I am a die-hard track fan. I never knew that there were so many different categories that an individual could fall into, I always just thought of black and white. This class has opened my eyes to really look deeper into situations and stories and not always listen to what you hear.
I would definitely recommend this class to anyone, not only sport management majors. I wish that this class was a requirement for Exercise Science students as well because several of exercise science students will be working in sports and with athletes and they would get a lot out of the class!
