Summary of "The Shame of College Sports"

            In the article “The Shame of College Sports” by Taylor Branch, Branch examines the flaws of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) regarding the concept of “amateurism” in College Sports. Branch gives many statistics at the start of the article to show that large Universities have huge profits: he claims that around 1 Billion USD are earned yearly per major college conference, such as the SEC or Big 10, from athletics, and that a single University earns 40-80 Million USD yearly from athletics. Branch continues to give statistics such as these throughout the article, all the time mentioning that the athletes do not get any of this money. Branch even mentions that the average head football coach at a University makes millions of dollars, but the athletes are heavily penalized if they try and make a few dollars selling their memorabilia. Branch then goes through the history of college sports and the NCAA, revealing some suspicious details of the NCAA’s past and discussing the life of Walter Byers, the executive director of the NCAA for many years.  Later in the article, Branch discusses the hypocrisy of the regulations of the NCAA which allow multinational corporations to advertise on the athlete’s gear but does not allow the athlete to use their celebrity status to obtain free tattoos. Branch also discusses the many court cases involving the NCAA, some of which deal with worker’s compensation (which was not given to the athlete) and the others which deal with players potentially breaking their “amateur” status and using agents, which caused the NCAA to enforce strict penalties to these players. However, Branch does mention a few cases where professors sued the Universities for changing grades to allow eligibility for college players, in which the NCAA did nothing. These cases show that the NCAA is not truly following their “education first” mantra. The final section of the article deals with current court cases which Branch discusses: in particular, O’Bannon v. NCAA, where O’Bannon is being represented by Michael Hausfeld, an antitrust and human-rights lawyer, who Branch has an interview with where Hausfeld appears very confident. This article, from start to finish, attacks the NCAA for their flaws and does an excellent job in revealing those flaws.

Works Cited

Branch, Taylor. "The Shame of College Sports." The Atlantic Oct. 2011. The Atlantic. Web. 29 Jan. 2012.

Summary of Jane McGonigal's "Gaming can make a better world"

Phil Hopkins

ENG 102

Ms. Diprince

1-26-12

Jane McGonigal’s presentation, “Gaming can make a better world,” is very well put together. McGonigal’s idea is that video games increase problem solving skills and form better people. These people are then more likely to solve the world’s problems, so society needs to increase the amount of time playing video games. McGonigal, being in the gaming industry, may have some biases which affect her motives for giving this presentation, but she discusses an economist’s view that is parallel to her own and gives stories of Herodotus to prove her point, which greatly increases her credibility and removes some doubt of her bias in the concept. McGonigal suggests that the evolution of the human race is to become like a video game player, and this becomes her thesis: Video game players have “urgent optimism,” which means they are optimistic but want to get things done in the moment; “social fabric,” meaning they strengthen their relationships with other humans through these games; “blissful productivity,” meaning they are happy while they are being incredibly productive with their goals in mind; and “epic meaning,” referring to the ultimate goal of saving the world or doing something amazing that makes the game worth playing. McGonigal claims these traits are the future of humanity and that they are good for humanity. To go about this, McGonigal asks that our gaming, which is currently 3 billion hours per week, be increased to 21 billion hours per week, which is one hour per day for half of the world population. This idea, which appears difficult or impossible, is supported by her presenting of new gaming consoles that use less energy and can be played by those in developing countries.  Overall, McGonigal’s presentation is excellent, but her ideas are hard to achieve in this day and age and her potential bias still may cause a viewer to not pay enough attention to what she is saying.

Works Cited

"Jane McGonigal: Gaming Can Make a Better World." YouTube. N.p., 17 Mar. 2010. Web. 26 Jan. 2012.

Chapter 1 Rhetorical Precis

Phil Hopkins
English 102
Ms. DiPrince
Chapter 1 Rhetorical Précis

In the first Chapter, “Making an Effective Argument,” of Good Reasons (2012),
Lester Faigley and Jack Selzer claim that arguments are very common in
college and are a vital part of college writing. Faigley and Selzer support
their claim by using many examples where arguments are used in daily life and
then going on to present information about how to make an argument and what
steps to take to do so. A large part of these steps is the establishment of
credibility, which the authors find very important. The purpose of the
authors is to inform the reader about the steps to create an argument in order to help improve the reader’s ability to form effective arguments. The audience the authors have in mind is a collection of college students taking a writing class because they use the word “college” many times and use vocabulary at a college level.







Works Cited

Faigley, Lester and Jack Selzer. Good Reasons: Researching and Writing Effective Arguments. Chicago: Pearson, 2012. Print

Blog That Got My Attention- January 23, 2012 Homework

This blog got my attention because it contains political alignment the same as my own (a minor leaning toward liberalism). To me, the blog is very aesthetically pleasing. The title banner is very nicely done and the organization of the page, with the title and then a graphic followed by the text, works well for my viewing. The blog also uses statistics from a credible source, and uses a graph to display the information they obtained. Perhaps the title is a bit long for the general public, but long titles are not always a bad thing (i.e. scholarly articles). This is the only real fault I can find with this part of the blog.