EN 106 How Big-Time Sports Ate College Life

It is so unfortunate that the time for reserving and separating the appendages of basketball and football in colleges and universities in America is probably way past. In her article, “How Big-Time Sports Ate College Life,” Laura Pappano contends that the primary focus for universities in America encircles sports rather than education.

Pappano wrote this against an escalated controversy of the commercialisation of sports by universities in America. Throughout her article, Pappano builds her credibility in the article using persuasive facts, statistics, and real-life examples to demonstrate how ignorantly American universities are devoted to sports, which negatively impacts education.

In her article, Pappano has brought forward a claim that sports have taken over the campus. She cited facts on how universities in America have exploited a substantive amount of their resources to sports.

Starting with providing examples to justify that claim using logos, Pappano demonstrates how America televises games to the extent of repealing class time to put up with sports schedules on television.

She gave the example of the University of Central Florida, which repealed a class to watch a game against the University of Tulsa on the television (Pappano 423).

To further justify her claims of sports taking over education, in terms of costs and builds a logos appeal by bringing out the facts and statistics to convince the reader. She has highlighted the financial resources or costs set aside for sports, where she exemplifies the Knight Commission report of 2010, which brought out that in 2009, the ten leading expenditures in the athlete department amounted to a median of $98 million (Pappano 419).

Pappano intends to bring the reader into contention about how much is spent on sports. However, she overlooks the cost of education. She appeals to logos again by bringing out facts by citing Glenn R. Waddell as proof of how the involvement of the players in the school’s sport’s team impacts their academic performance.

Like she applies the logos, Pappano also applies ethos to allow her evidence to tug the conscience of her readers to build her character. One way in which Pappano builds her character is by citing renowned professors like Glenn R. Waddell.

From the information she acquires from the professor, who compared more than 29,700 student transcripts starting 1999 to 2007 against the win-loss records of Oregon (Pappano 419), Pappano brings reliable convincing facts that “For every three games won, grade-point average for men dropped 0.02” (Pappano 419).

Pappano, to prove that sports impacted performance and behaviour of students at schools, uses Dr. Clotfelter’s claims that “Big-time sports” have a real effect on the way people in universities behave.” (419). The facts and detailed information she highlights establish an appeal to the logos and thus impressing readers that the issue is worth looking into.

The authors also create a pathos appeal in her attempt to convince the reader that other developed nations like China prioritise education yet still a powerful nation.

She exemplifies a powerful country like China that demonstrate a contrast on the culture and beliefs about academic performance and education in America. She justifies that by the statement, “In China and other parts of the world, there are no gigantic stadiums in the middle of campus.

There is a laser focus on education as being the major thing. In the United States, we play football.” (Pappano 418) This is a pathos appeal because it tends to stir up a feeling of disbelief. Pappano wants people to believe that education is more important than sports.

Pappano’s article has one notable fault. Pappano is biased as she only considers proving the negative side of university sports, stating that the only benefit for sports is bringing the students together.

She states, “It’s become so important on the college campus that it’s one of the only ways the student body knows how to come together,” (Pappano 418). Everything has its pros and cons, and a one-sided argument would be a depiction of bias.

Pappano would have, therefore, tried to state some of the benefits associated with involving ion sports in universities and colleges.

Overall, Pappano establishes a strong claim on why it is beneficial for universities to consider and prioritise education than sports. She highlights credible facts and statistics that the reader and universities may apply in deciding how to share resources between education and sports.

Overall, Pappano is an effective writer who has shown to effectively apply the logos, ethos, and pathos to ensure that she drives her point home by effectively appealing to the reader’s conscience and mind in spite of raising a one-sided argument that views sport in universities as purely negative.

Works Cited

Pappano, L. (2018). How big-time sports ate college life, In S. Greene, & A. Lidinsky, (4th ed.) From Inquiry to Academic Writing (pp. 416-426). Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s.

EN 106 The Cultural Norms of Poverty

Introduction

The topics “How I Discovered the Truth about Poverty” by Barbara Ehrenreich, “Seeing and Making Culture: Representing the Poor” by bell hooks and “The Rise of the Working Poor” by Richard Reich, all are discussing about the poverty in our culture and the reasons of people who are poor. Why are they poor?

What made them think they are poor and also who exactly are the ones working this society? The truth about the poor people is that they do their best to earn and work for this society, in which the people with status eat on their hard work and efforts.

Body

Poor people are not mostly welcomed by the rich people in their rich standards and stylish lives. They aren’t even allowed to sit with them or have the same dish. Because of these norms, kids in schools are also doing the same deeds with other kids which is a never-ending chain.

When these kids grow up from schools, there are institutes that are further categorised in the domain of expensive institutes that are specifically for rich people and government institutes where all the poor people re supposed to go. According to these standards, the poor students aren’t even assigned higher ranking jobs.

Barbara is discussing her life in her readings on how she came to know who is poor and why is she thinking herself as poor too. She is an author who worked hard for herself to accomplish the standards in a difficult way by not giving up. She made her way through education even though she was told that she’s not meant to be where she wanted to be (Ehrenreich).

“To be impoverished is to be an internal alien, to grow up in a culture that is radically different from the one that dominates the society.” (p.16)

In this quote, she is trying to inform how a poor person feels. It is obvious he grew up in a poor family, now he is criticising and thinking what if he had been born in a rich one?

A poor person’s dreams and fantasies are never coming true. They dream of knowing that fact. They don’t try too hard because they know that if they have to try hard, then it means they have to do more than their abilities just to fulfil one of their wishes. This is why the majority doesn’t do anything about it.

They know they don’t belong in the rich people’s lives. To them, they are street rats or aliens. Children have to grow up in such circumstances doing labour daily.

Bell hooks are supporting Barbara’s truth and talking about society with their pre-developed culture and school of thoughts. He is discussing why a poor person remains poor even in the end and those of them who are trying hard;

they get nothing but miserable and demotivating remarks from the society (Hooks). Even the new generation thinks about the poor in a bad way.

They don’t consider them people who are worth talking about, which is utterly wrong (p.486-488). These factors are just mere thoughts that are being passed onto people. Hook states that “Value was connected to integrity, to being honest and hardworking.” (p.488)

Indeed, those who work hard are the ones who are truly valuable. The rich people are simply the bread eaters of this society who do nothing and who nothing about how things are actually done.

They have hands with soft palms. They have no experience of hardships or sweating to earn. Instead, wealth is simply handed over to them. Richard is not showing the poor as the poor people, though.

He is stating the facts of our lives. People who are rich are not exactly rich. He is claiming that the poor people are the ones who are the breadwinners and the workers of the society we live in. They are the ones who are earning in reality (Reich).

Robert is of the view that the Americans are more into this cultural norm. He states that Americans had their ancestors gather all the wealth which has been distributed among their children and grandchildren.

After that, it is simply being used by them, and they don’t even have to work. He says that the non-working rich of the society were paying taxations up to 30 per cent in the late 1908s but now that has further reduced to 20 per cent.

This means that 80 per cent of the taxes are paid by the people who are working hard day and night for themselves (p.740-749).

Conclusion

The society we live in has a predefined and pre-outlined step of procedures already. We are simply following or being led by the higher ups. They are controlling us from the schools of thoughts that are engraved in our minds. Because of this, our culture is mainly based on two categories.

The rich rule and the poor work. The rich aren’t rich because they made efforts; rather, they are rich because they are living on the efforts made by the poor.

The poor consider themselves low lives or aliens. They think they live in a society where they have no worth. Because of this, most of them don’t make efforts to change their lifestyles.

The bitter truth of being poor is that wherever they go, they won’t be accepted by the rich. However, they are the ones running the society. If they stop working, the rich will be devastated because they have no idea of how something is done.

References Ehrenreich, Barbara. How I Discovered the Truth About Poverty. n.d. https://herculodge.typepad.com/critical_thinker/2015/11/how-i-discovered-the-truth-about-poverty-by-barbara-ehrenreich.html. 11 march 2015. Hooks, Bell. “Seeing and Making Culture: Representing the Poor.” Pichpanharath, 2018.

https://prath37420052.wordpress.com/2018/04/30/seeing-and-making-culture-representing-the-poor-by-bell-hooks-486-492/. Reich, Robert. The Rise of the Working Poor and the Non-Working Rich. 30 march 2015. https://robertreich.org/post/115067624170.

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