Sport Pages 15

• Before this class, I didn't know really all of the facets that went into the sport world.  I didn't know how much cultural aspects go into what types of sports people normally play.  One thing that I really took away from the class was what really happens to professional athletes after their careers and how there isn't really a clean transition into assimilating to the real world.  I always that that during their careers, they would make so much money that they would be set fro life but that really isn't the case all the time.

• For the most part, it hasn't changed drastically but it has shed a little bit more light on aspects of sports that I really overlooked.  For example I feel like now if I were on a sports team that I would be a lot more accepting of having someone on the team who was LGBTQiAA because of all we have learned about the issue and how progress needs to be made in the sporting world.

• The facts that stood out the most was post professional athlete life (mentioned earlier) and how vicious Paralympic sports such as Murderball can be.  The unit about disabled bodies as a whole just really opened my eyes to the fact that they are just as competitive as any athlete out there.

• Even though my sporting career has been over from high school, I feel like moving on after this class into the real world I will think about all of the concepts that we have learned whenever I am attending a sporting event or watching one on TV.  I'll probably listen a lot more to the commentary and see exactly how they touch on topics such as the sports ethic and toughness in sport.

• I would most likely recommend this class to a friend because most people I know are (or have been) some sort of athlete and I think that it would help them be a lot more open minded with different topics in sport as it did with me.
  

Sports Pages 14

I personally think that sport is becoming more of a safe place for LGBT athletes but isn't completely safe yet.  If there are still people afraid to come out in the sports world (which there still are), it will never be completely "safe".  I think that when it is less of a big deal to be LGBT in sports and people aren't singles out for being gay as they are now, the atmosphere for LGBT individuals will be safer.  
Strategies that I think would create a more inclusive sport culture would be to maybe have more sensitivity classes that all players of a given team should be required to take before they can be apart of a team while not having people who happen to be LGBT feel as if they are being singled out.  When referring to the movie that we watched, we see that girls who were lesbian or associated with lesbians were singled out and discriminated against, making it even harder for these individuals to speak up and explain who they really were.  By stifling people and making them feel like they have to keep their true identity a secret makes them only feel even more alienated and as time goes on, hopefully more of an inclusive atmosphere will develop in the sports world to promote more inclusivity. 

Sports Pages 13

• Define the significance of sport in the African American culture.

Sport is a very significant part of the African American culture.  For the most part regardless of the socioeconomic setting, sports such as basketball and football that are relatively inexpensive and bring African Americans together.  In all of the movies listed as well, a form of brotherhood is fostered from playing basketball with one another

• Compare and contrast the Hollywood portrayal of the African American athlete with that in the Hoop Dreams documentary.  Include a picture from the Hollywood film you are comparing.

With the movie Blind Side, the moral of the story is that a white family takes in Michael Ohr and he eventually becomes a successful football player at the high school, college, and professional level.  If he weren't able to get the support and opportunities he received from the family that took him in, it would be impossible for him to have made it.  In the same way, William was also given an opportunity by a white family to help pay for his education at St. Joseph's but the main difference was that it didn't work out picture perfect for William and Arthur  as it did for for Michael.  Michael's was a rare story that ended up to work out, but it doesn't always work out perfectly. 

 https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSfHkMskdEBk4GctALrNXfi0jMdOfMlfcF98-zZJF6COFkyb0LuN3kUt8uL1qX8I7C4_E6H-VzGylSBr2NuAzCN0E6BMOLAZPYMEM06GZu6f9Vp-H3Fjl8AbGyH1UOmG2YA8DkBTDH3yKX/s1600/theblindside.jpg

• Is sport damaging Black American and preserving the myth of race?

In some ways, the physicality and violence associated with sport can potentially damage the ideal of the Black American (making them seem more violent) but for the most part, I think it does more good than harm.

Sports Pages 12

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFKW3Wu5Zck

The message that is portrayed in this commercial is gender relation within the male gender.  It shows how the two men, Dwyane Wade and Kevin Durant coexist within the same sport culture and are at odds against one another even in their dreams.  The fact that the idea of losing to one another wakes them up at night shows how important it is to be more athletic and masculine than the other person in order to make sure that they are as ready as can be when they compete against one another

Consequences of showing this intragender relation in the commercial will force males to train harder and harder in order to out do one another come competition to prove masculinity.

Sochi Paper

Junior DeSouza

Sochi Olympics Paper

            The winter Olympics this year were held in Sochi Russia.  This was at first a very controversial place to hold the Olympics due to the speculations that the rest of the world had concerning the Russian government and diplomacy.  On the weeks leading up to the games, many people in Western countries such as the US greatly feared the possibility of a terrorist attack on the games due to Russia’s lack of intelligence sharing with the rest of the world.  Some of the athletes even advised some of their family and friends to rather stay back and watch the games in the US as opposed to coming to Russia and potentially putting their lives in danger.  Another element that added to the Western questioning of the safety of the event was that just a month prior to when athletes and competitors were scheduled to arrive in Sochi that there was a terrorist attack not too far from Sochi in which 34 people were killed by suicide bombers.

            In the end, the Sochi Olympics were conducted without the threat of any such terrorist attacks that could potentially harm the athletes, spectators, or families viewing the games.  This was able to happen due to the fact that the guards wee very well equipped with firearms in case something were to happen, there were metal detectors at every possible entrance, and that there were strict regulations on giving out visitor passes for people to enter the games.  Even with this strict code on getting into the games, personnel responsible for keeping a secure and strict presence were able to make a comfortable and joyful atmosphere for the viewers of the games.  All in all, Sochi was able to provide a safe atmosphere for the games, which came as a nice surprise foer all of the Western viewers of the games.

High School Sport (Counts as 2 Sport Pages)

The social conditions in which high school sport emerged were creating a social outlet for teenagers to create bonds with one another and foster a sense of belonging and community.  In addition to this, high school sports develop and can possibly instill the ideals of commitment and hard work to the growing teenagers within schools in our society.

The objective of high school sport is to not only bring players on the team closer together, but also to bring the entirety of the school body together as well. Take the football homecoming games for example.  There are pep rallies and parades and then the whole high school (and the rest of the surrounding community) are able to get involved in order to cheer the home team on.  This has been a tradition for many high schools across the country and its persistence shows that getting the school body and the community's involvement is a primary objective for high school sports. 

Possible problems with interscholastic sports can possibly be rivalries taken too far between different schools and also sports having TOO much of an importance in the lives of the student body and in the lives of the student athletes.  When rivalries are taken too far, people and property might be potentially put at risk because of the strong hatred that one school can have for another. Also, the sports weighing too on a student athlete can male them divert time that they could be using for their studies to just focusing on the sport that they play.  As far as a solution for the mass rivalries, this could be diminished by more harsh penalties against the school if they are to take it too far when their school plays another school in a given sport.

Once the cheering stops: The life of a retired pro-athlete

One of the major difficulties that retired athletes have to face is dealing and paying for medical treatment after their careers are over.  with football for example, it is a very violent sport and can leave players with long term impairments that require a lot of expensive treatments after their careers are over.  In addition to this, retired players are more susceptible to want to self medicate (by abusing drugs) in order to cope with the injuries that they have sustained throughout the many years of playing their given sport.
The transition from being a full time athlete to becoming a retired athlete is also very difficult.  Most of these players have to retire relatively early and when they do, most don't have a hard set plan as to what they are going to do with the rest of their lives.  They essentially go from making millions of dollars one day to potentially having to work minimum wage the next day depending on when their money runs out (and for a lot of them it is fairly quick because of the expensive taste that is acquired after making so much money during their careers).  The flashy lifestyle that athletes live nowadays is so ingrained in the culture that it sets them up for losing all of the money that they made during their career
Also, the way that sports are, you never know when your last day is going to be.  Whether it be an injury or your team decides to drop you, the way that sports are make it very unstable.