Paying College Athletes Summary

Don't understand why college athletes should be paid? Let me give you a hypothetical.

Imagine an owner of a company that is predominantly made up of unpaid interns. These interns are subject to some of the most physically demanding duties in their work environment, and risk blood and body everyday. At their work place they are constantly verbally and physically harassed often in a demeaning matter, and are evaluated solely on their superficial talents. Despite the fact that their boss occasionally makes more $100 million, he refuses to pay his interns. The interns therefore, without enough time in the day to work another job, fall deeper into poverty.

Now, most would agree that the above stated working environment is something that should not be endured by anyone. However, it is. Not only has it become an excepted work place in our society, but every Saturday 100,000 fans cheer for it at America’s coliseums. Ridiculous right?

College football players in the NCAA risk their well being everyday for no pay. They put on pads and a helmet to play games that rack in millions of dollars for their schools, yet often return home to a family that couldnt even afford to go tothe game. This is an issue that has been discussed by many sportswriters and bloggers alike, and it is why I chose to do my Junior Theme on this topic.

Rooting for the underdog

March Madness is upon us, and it is time to fill out your bracket. After I completed my first go, I realized that I had all #1 seeds in the final four. In the history of the tournament, this has happened once (2008). So, I thought why not pick a couple of Cinderella's to upset them early on? I always love rooting for the underdogs in the tournament because it makes it interesting, but when I think about it, people should want to root for a good, winning team. So why pick the underdog?

Recent Cinderella VCU celebrating an upset

Researchers have found plenty of support for what seems like an obvious notion: In sports, we're drawn to a winner. Other factors (like where you live and who your friends are) can influence your choice of a favorite team.  Team success is kind of like the icing on the cake at that point

Which brings us to that peculiar situation, so common in college basketball, where too much icing ruins the cake. In 1991, a pair of researchers at Bowling Green State University, Jimmy Frazier and Eldon Snyder, published a paper called "The Underdog Concept in Sports". They posed a simple hypothetical scenario to more than 100 college students: Two teams, A and B, were meeting in a best-of-seven playoff series for some unidentified sport, and Team A was "highly favored" to win. Which team would the students root for?

Eighty-one percent chose the underdog.

Then the students were asked to imagine that Team B had somehow managed to win the first three games of the series. Would the subjects root for the sweep or switch allegiance to the favorite? Half of those who first picked the underdog now said they'd support Team A. It was the same, ridiculous approach I am taking this year, rooting for #15 Detroit to upset #2 Kansas. Let's go Titans!

Who watches what?

How come we watch so much TV?

Maybe because it is there. But analysts have studied the appeal of various TV categories, and advertisers and TV networks have invested tons of money in attempts to reach audience categories of a particular age, sex or income level. Studying TV Tokenism, we step into the mostly unknown world of TV programming.

Most of these efforts have focused on answering the question, "Who watches?" But analysts have gone beyond the demographic categories to focus on how television viewing fits in with other leisure time decisions including other media choices like movies, magazines, newspapers and sports events.

Even a basic look at the categories creates some common assumptions. For example, young, blue-collar males watch TV sports less frequently than any other male group. African american viewers watch more television but also read the highest percentage of newspapers. Teenage boys like programs that poke fun at male authority figures, perhaps because they want to see someone "stick up to the man". 

This rebel is sometimes caused by parents, teachers, or any other adult that has some control of their life. At one point in our lives we always wanted to stick prove ourselves that we are in control, and perhaps for some young adults they turn to these TV shows for guidance. 

For us students, we are starting to reach the young adult age group, so get ready to watch much more sports and prime time television.