Month: April 2020

Passion #10

Wow, what a crazy semester and first year of college. Did not go exactly the way I expected. Never in a million years would I have called  ending in a global pandemic, but here we are.

This class feels a lot different than all the other ones I had because it was the whole year not just one semester and it was actually fun.

Even for classes that I enjoyed the topics or had friends in, most of the time I would’ve rather been sleeping or doing anything else. But this class was an exception to that most of the time.

I don’t really have a specific favorite part or moment, so I’d have to say that my favorite part was definitely  all of the questions of the day where we could listen to a bunch of funny answers and stories.

And I liked how much Meg would treat us like adults and allow for our schedules and opinions to be factored in like they mattered.

passion #9: Boredom

There are many real problems right now like disease, losing your job, the economy collapsing in general, overcrowding of hospitals, etc.

Aside from all of those, the much less significant one that most people seem to be universally facing right now is boredom. We are stuck at home not allowed to go out or ever see any of our friends. Or even go in public. I would love to run errands right now. I cannot believe that I ever complained about having to go anywhere.

This quarantine I’ve tried to keep busy by working out, doing stuff for class, and hanging out with my family. This has only gotten me so far since there’s only so much of this you can do. This has led to me getting into reality dating TV shows, and anime. Both of which I never knew were really good.

However, once school ends in a couple weeks, there really is going to be nothing to do at all. We probably won’t be able to get jobs or hang out with our friends still for at least a month and probably much more. Because of this I’ve decided to buy a guitar. I have never played any musical instrument ever in my life, but I decided that right now would be the perfect time to try. If nothing else, it will be something that can occupy several hours of my day.

I’ve also decided to get back into yoga which I used to do a lot, but haven’t done in over a year. This will be another thing that can occupy my time and this will be a calming and enriching activity as well.

Another thing that I am taking advantage of is not getting my hair cut. Of course all the barbers are closed so I couldn’t get it cut if I wanted to. But, I am in Army ROTC where we have to have our hair cut within certain regulations, so not being in school has allowed me to grow it out a lot. And I don’t think I’ll cut it at all until I have to.

I’m hoping that having these new hobbies will help the quarantine go by faster. And worse case scenario, I’ll come out of this being able to play the guitar. So that’s a plus.

CI: Issue Brief Draft

Draft is a loose word

This is more of an outline

It will definitely be finished by the due date tho

 

 

Tommy Shero

4/16/20

Issue Brief Draft

 

Overall group idea: College Athletes and Pay

Intro- What to do?

Body 1- Case for

Body 2- Case against- ME

Body 3- Case for letting them make money off of their likeness

Conclusion- The best solution is letting them make money off their likeness

 

AP

  • Sports talk radio
  • We each debate
  • We do a poll after and the winner is likeness

 

Argument against college athletes getting paid

 

Main points

  1. Scholarship money
    1. Same as average American
  2. Perks
    1. Medical, facilities, stage, gear
    2. Travel
  3. Case against fair market value
    1. Cheating will still occur
    2. Athletes not worth anything until the pros
  4. Only football and basketball are impacted
    1. If you pay one you’re going to have to pay them all
    2. Not fair to pay one sport or gender more than the others even though they might generate more or less revenue
  5. NCAA doesn’t have enough money to pay the atheltes
  6. Hurt the sport
    1. Not playing for pride
    2. Or school but just money
  7. Hard to project which players will be stars so pay won’t even be equitable

 

Sources

 

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1588301-theres-no-crying-in-college-the-case-against-paying-college-athletes

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2018/03/23/596132113/why-shouldnt-we-pay-student-athletes

https://www.npr.org/2019/10/30/774850944/an-argument-for-not-allowing-college-athletes-to-earn-compensation

https://www.newyorker.com/sports/sporting-scene/why-ncaa-athletes-shouldnt-be-paid

Passion #8 Love is Blind

All I can seem to do now for my blog posts is type about whatever show I am currently watching or just finished on Netflix. So here we go again.

 

SPOILER ALERT

 

I turned on Love is Blind to see just how stupid is was going to be and boy was I not disappointed. It was exactly the low tier trash entertainment that I was craving. I haven’t ever really gotten into any reality dating TV show before even the Bachelor, but I had heard just how fun they were to watch, so I decided to stick with it. And I’m sure glad that I did.

I binged all 11 episodes in about 3 days in between working on school work and it was so enthralling. I thought that the beginning was very cool because it was such an interesting concept of having 10 days to find a fiance without ever seeing them. I personally think that that’s crazy and would never do it, but I gotta respect those people for putting themselves out there.

The middle kinda dragged a little because there was less drama, so they had to kind of stretch for a couple of the big moments, but I still liked it a lot. And I really did develop strong opinions towards the people and which of them were good couples or not.

The ending tho. DID. NOT. DISAPPOINT. It was amazing. It was the biggest cringe I’ve ever seen on TV. So good. 3 out of 5 of the weddings ended in one of the people saying that they couldn’t marry the other. It must have been heart-breaking for the people, but I couldn’t stop laughing. If every season has an ending like that than I will always be watching. Also the reunion episode was awesome because they all got to watch the show and could see all the times other people were talking shit or backstabbing them. I laughed so hard when Jessica got called out. I hated Jessica, she’s the worst. She got what she deserved in the end.

I have to say that one of the only good things that’ll come out of this quarantine for me is my newfound love for reality TV  dating shows. I will definitely be watching the next season of the Bachelor. I considered watching the one on Netflix, but it’s from like 2007. I feel like that’s a show that you need to watch live so that’s what I’ll be doing.

Civic Issue #5 Issue Brief Title and First paragraph

Justin Rheinstadter, Tommy Shero, Anurag Pandey

Meg Tully – CAS 138T

April 6, 2020

College Athletes Need Pay to Fairly Play

College athletes are essentially employees working thousands of hours to create billions of dollars. None of which goes to them. For years, their labor has been exploited by the NCAA and the schools that they attend. The NCAA makes over 1 billion dollars per year not including the hundreds of millions of dollars that each individual school makes off of their programs as well. 

Professional athletes are known to make substantially large salaries, mainly due to the amount of revenue they bring in. College athletes playing for the NCAA, on the other hand, may make little to no salary while still bringing in large amounts of revenue for the NCAA, or their college or university. An argument can be made that college athletes receive scholarships which pay for a part or the entirety of their tuition, however, does this compare to professional athletes’ salaries. According to Forbes, the average salary of NBA players in 2016 was $6.2 million1. In the MLB: $4.4 million. In the NHL: $2.9 million. As seen in the Figure 1 below, the trends are significant.

 

Figure 11

In 2017, the NCAA generated $1.1 billion in revenue. CBS and Turner combined pay about $800 million in total every year  to broadcast March Madness, and none of it goes to the players that make it happen. College athletes do much more than just that. They also help their schools generate revenue through ticket sales, making appearances for fundraising events and boosting the overall school brand.

 

Passion #7: Tiger King

I just finished the Tiger King on Netflix yesterday and absolutely loved it. There isn’t much to do these days other than watch Netflix so I’m just going to make my blog post about this intriguing documentary.

SPOILER WARNING

 

 

 

There are a lot of people who have voiced their opinion about Joe Exotic thinking that he got set up and should be set free from prison. I disagree with them. I think he got exactly what he deserved since he’s done tons of terrible things and he definitely deserves all the prison time that he’s gotten. That being said, I do agree that he’s not even close to the only person who deserves to be in prison. Not by a long shot. Jeff Lowe should be in prison, the hit man he hired, Doc,and probably Carol too. Jeff was just as much a part of the plot to try to murder Carol as Joe was and I can’t believe that there hasn’t been any attempt to put him behind bars as well. Also the hit man, I forget his name, nearly went through with the job and accepted money to kill Carol. That is extremely illegal and he should be in prison as well.

Now when it comes to Carol, I think she killed her husband. There’s no real evidence that she did, but all of the circumstantial evidence lines up. Also in the show when Joe is talking about how he thought that someone put cologne on his shoe to get a tiger to eat him, Carol says “The only way to get a tiger to eat someone is to cover them in sardine oil or something.” How would she know what to put on a person to get a tiger to eat them? The only way she’d know is if she had done it before…to her husband.

Lastly, in all of the lies and crimes, I feel the worst for the tigers and all the other animals. I think that none of them belong here. I feel so bad for all of them just being put on display. It should be illegal. They should all be in the wild where they belong.