Conclusion - Turea Moore

This class was honestly my favorite one this whole semester, I actually enjoyed coming to class and I felt like I learned something new every class that we had.  This was a class that I had to take for a Sport Management requirement at first, but honestly, I would take this class over again if I just needed some extra courses to add.  One of my favorite discussions during class was about LeBron James, but that is no surprise, I love when he is being talked about! Outside of that, my favorite topic/subject that was discussed was the Holly Mangold story as well.  That had to be one of the most motivating stories I have ever heard because in today's society, people who are her weight, they aren't happy about it or with themselves, and more than likely they aren't active in sports either.  I just loved how Holly was so optimistic about everything and how she loved herself for who she was, she embraces her weight, and its not an issue to her, there has to be more people in today's society who thinks like that.

Lastly, something that I had actually learned that I knew nothing about before this class was the Athletic Arms Race between schools.  I never knew there was an actually name for wanting to compete with other schools to see who has the best arenas, fields, recruiting and more.  It was also interesting to find out that BG was doing a good job with that within our conference as well.

I'm glad that I had the opportunity to take this class.

Conclusion

This class is now the third I have taken with Dr. Spencer, and the reason I keep coming back is to be engaged in learning. Not just out of a book, article, or lecture- but mainly from the sharing of ideas, information, and debating about all of the things brought forth. This type of course is great to partake in because of the things you learn from your classmates and things you may have not known about yourself.

I especially enjoyed discussing the ideals about male and female athletes when it comes to looks and personality. Hollie Mangold is such an inspiration for her outspoken, and larger than life personality. She is such a great role model and deserves a lot of credit for her positive influence on young female athletes, and also all athletes in general.

Again, I really appreciate the opportunity to step outside of the normal college classroom and voice my opinion openly and hear others do the same. The topics we covered kept it interesting and engaging. Blogging and journaling is another to voice an opinion and thought. Some work on keep better schedule and track of posts and comments would definitely help.

Stephanie Loomis

Conclusion-Gene Csakany

Honestly, I had some of the most fun I’ve had in a class at college so far, in this very class. I love debating topics, mostly because I’m very opinionated, so the fact that the forum on every subject is always wide open, it makes for a great discussion.  I would not say I “learned” anything new in the sense of facts and figures, but more so, I was opened up too much deeper discussion of tons of new topics.  I loved how everyone was able to voice their different opinions and just keep discussions going.  Most of the time this type of debate has people more a less attacking each other’s opinion, but in this case everyone just stood their ground on their point of view and let it be known, but then moved on.  Many of the reading were very interesting to me so it is hard to pinpoint just one.  I feel as though most, if not all, of the readings sparked great debate and that was really what I enjoyed the most as I said. 

 Keeping a blog was very interesting.  I feel as though we should have had free reign on any topics we wanted to blog about in relation to anything we covered it the class, but we needed to follow what we talked about or what we related to things from the last set of classes.  Also, the freedom of the final presentations was also fun.  I feel as though it may have helped to have a type of template, but all in all, the last presentation was very interesting to research and present to the class as a new topic.  I think the power of debate and opening your mind is what I will take from this class for my professional career.  I think that is what will be most useful to my life, opening my mind and being able to listen to what others have to say and not just forcing your opinion on them. 

Conclusion - Josiah Blevins

Overall I found this class to be very enjoyable.  My favorite part about the class was the discussion, in some classes no one talks so the discussion lacks.  But in this class I learned a lot on many different topics because of the discussion.  Two of the main things I will take away is everything on multi gender athletes.  Before the class I knew some information on the topic but this class has shown that things are not as easy as black and white.  Another thing that was interesting was the cool pose and the effect it had on sports.  One of the favorite topics we discussed in class was LeBron James and The Decision.  Not being from Ohio it shed some light on the whole subject matter.  It did not change my opinion on him or anything but it was nice to see different viewpoints.  The Special Olympics was another topic I liked.  The presentations at the end gave me more information on these remarkable athletes.  Presentations as a whole were neat because it gave more information on certain topics we did not discuss in great detail in the class.  To see how much attention the regular Olympics gets compared to the Special Olympics is mind blowing. 

The article on which athlete you would pay to see was my favorite article.  It was intriguing to see what athletes other athletes would pay to see.  It also showed how certain athletes wished they could have been good at another sport.  Doing a blog it made me more aware of certain issues or viewpoints.  I did not want to offend anyone so you had to pick your words very carefully sometimes.  The blog I believed was a good choose for me because it let me see many different viewpoints from the class other than just mine.  The job I want to have after I graduate is becoming a high school athlete director.  This course will help if I come into certain situations with budgeting because we had a homework assignment that dealt with that.  It will also help with handling different issues like females in sports or disabilities in sport.  In the end I found this class very enjoyable and learned a lot.

Josiah Blevins

The Conclusion -Tim Love

This class has been very exciting to say the least.  I have learned so much in this class and a lot from other people.  We probably had the most in depth discussions that I've ever been apart of. At least once a week we would get sidetracked by our class discussions and they would take up the whole period.  I found this to be my favorite part of the class.  I liked how we all could relate things to other things.  I also liked that we got to give Dr.Spencer more knowledge on how some things are today.  I felt like we got to teach her as she taught us.

One of the most interesting topics we talked about in class was homosexuality in sport.  I found this topic very interesting, especially when we talked about the two homosexual football players.  In all, I still believe that you won't see many pro athletes coming out and tell people that they're homosexual while their still playing the sport.  It would cause so much controversy and other things that at the end of the day may affect their play.  So I think that the ones that do come out, will do so after their careers are over.

In conclusion, this was one of my favorite classes of the semester, and since I've been here.  The discussions that we had drove the class and made everyone feel engaged.  I have gained a better understanding of gender in sport through this class, and hope others have as well.

The "Other" Olympics- Gene Csakany

I’m going to write my blog entry on one of the presentations we heard in class last week.  Both of them were very informative and interesting, but the one about the handicapped Olympics really stood out.  We spoke about sports and athletic “fairness” and how it relates to males and females.  We also briefly did touch on handicapped athletes this semester, but we rarely spoke on how unfair what they go through is.  When thinking about women’s or men's professional sports there is obviously a disparity in viewership, publicity, marketing and revenue.  But that gap is widened when speaking about any sport that has a handicapped athlete, especially the Olympics.  When speaking on the Olympics, there are obviously some sports that get more publicity than others, but that is just mostly based on popularity of the sport itself, rarely just based on gender.  When the Olympics come around, people more or less have a sense of national pride and watch most of the events at least once regardless of gender.  For example, the women’s swimming team and soccer team were just as popular, if not more popular in this past summer Olympics than their male counterparts.  Once we talk about any events in the handicapped Olympics, it basically becomes irrelevant to us.  But when asked the question do we support it, or do we think it’s truly amazing that handicapped individuals are given the chance to compete, we all say yes.  Clearly that is not the case because how many of us could really say we knew about the “other” Olympics occurring this summer?  How many could say they would have shown the national pride, and support those competing for America?  The revenue, ticket sale, sponsorships and publicity are simply not readily present in the Handicapped Olympics; so when talking about the disparity amongst race, or gender, I think we need to think about how difficult it is simply to try to compete while being handicapped. 

Coaching and Race - Wes Gates

I decided to write this post about a recent topic that has hit the news in which Colorado football coach Jon Embree was claimed to be fired due to race.  Embree was recently fired after only his second year coaching Colorado.  Ironically, these claims were not made by him but rather a former coach that is white.  Bill McCartney, the former coach, says that Embree was not given the same opportunity to build up the football program that a white coach would be given.  He did not inherit very much talent and the Colorado football program has struggled mightily over the last decade.  McCartney even went on to state he received more than two years for a similar situation and claimed it was in large part due to being Caucasian.

This got me thinking about how this situation was handled and if it was right or wrong.  Colorado did have a winless season and in a conference like the Pac-12, this is unacceptable.  College revenue sports are a business and I firmly believe there is a "win now" attitude by big time institutions.  From this standpoint, I can justify the firing of Embree.  On the other side, two years isn't a long time to attempt to turn around a struggling football program.  What I find alarming is that a former white coach came public with these remarks about race being a big issue.  The following ESPN article contains a very good video article explaining what happened and possible rationale for the firing:

http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/8685399/former-colorado-buffaloes-coach-blames-racism-jon-embree-firing

In my opinion, it is more difficult for a Non-Caucasian to get a head coaching job in the NCAA.  Looking around college sports there aren't too many that come to mind and when they get hired, it is made a big deal revolving around race.  Does anyone else feel this way or have a different thought?