Research Sources: Collegiate Student-Athletes

For project 2 my proposed topic is collegiate student-athletes and what makes one based on my criteria. I picked this topic because I am one and it is something I'm obviously interested in collegiate athletics. I want to explore more into this subject because it's most likely I will learn more about athlete's role on a university campus and perhaps questions I have had. Also the reason I've chosen this topic is to find out the judgements other people may have on student athletes, and what kind of criteria they may have evaluated me by. The well emphasized idea of treating other Sun Devil's like a family and being a "good teammate" include many things besides just the thought of acting nicely towards each other. These things make up my criteria for making judgements of student-athletes at ASU, or evaluating, if you like. My criteria is created by a series of aspects of a Sun Devil's life, day, season or moment that makes them successful. Included in the criteria is: practice/prep, performance, academics and management, and support. In evaluating these topics I will identify how and where sports teams practice and prepare for their seasons, perform on game days, how they balance school and sport, and one of the most important ones, supporting of other teams and athletes.

My first source from the Hayden Library is a book called "Athlete's Game Plan for College and Career" written by Stephen Figler and Howard Figler. It is composed up of 252 pages and divided into 3 "Game Plans": Choosing a college, winning in college, and a successful career. I will probably mostly be using the second game plan to enforce my subjects of succeeding at ASU. I think through the 3 parts, it can be very useful to use the transition of the college experience from applying to graduating and even your life afterwards. This way I can use the past present and future to identify supporting evidence for my evaluation. In particular Part 2: Chapter 10 describes studying and coping skills, which will go perfectly along with finding balance in school work and sport. A cool thing I found while flipping through the book were a couple Athlete Profiles which were really interesting to read. They explained the aspects of a certain athletes collegiate career and were useful as supporting evidence for my project.

My second source I found is also a book from Hayden called Sociology of Sport: Perspectives written by Susan L. Greendorfer and Andrew Yiannakis. Has 191 pages also composed into 3 parts: Sociology of sport as a field study, Sport, Social Progresses, and Social Roles, and Sport and Social institutions. I will mostly be using the last part because it relates with universities and sport policies. What I find interesting about this book is the different perspectives given about sport that I have never thought about before. In skimming it I learned about the impact alumni have on sports teams and funding them financially. I don't think I will use this book a lot for my project just because there isn't too much about athletes versus the the broader view of the sports themselves.

My third source is a scholarly article written by Robyn Holmes, Marilyn McNeil, Patti Adorna and Jill Procaccino called Collegiate Student Athletes' Preferences and Perceptions Regarding Peer Relationships. It's a journal article of 14 pages and is basically what I'm after in terms of finding out more about how student athletes function and why we judge them based on certain social standards. In reading the article it was interesting to read some of the ways leadership on a team is evaluated and they explained some studies that were performed to discover how student athletes acted compared to other peers. Also the article itself was an evaluation mostly about leadership within teams and it will be very beneficial for me to see how they use evidence from studies and teams to support their conclusions and criteria on judging student-athlete perceptions.

Evaluation: Glee

In watching the new season of glee recently, I found it really emphasized the original concept of the TV show. I suppose that's the way it should be considering its a new season and new characters are being introduced to the idea of glee club and its goals: acceptance and success. It presents the idea that anyone is accepted and creates a safe environment, judgement free which is what a lot of the Glee kids need in their life to secure stability. New Directions is the name of their Glee club at William McKinley High School where in the show, stereotypes are what some people thrive on and what some people suffer by. For example, a homosexual man named Kurt, gets continuously harassed by the popular football guys but the glee club has his back and they do not judge him on his sexual interests. It sends a sign to society these days that it is okay to be gay and be yourself for there are people out there like you and it gives certain people role models to look up too in the celebrity world. Although a lot of the stereotypes are greatly exaggerated, it emphasizes the impact they have on people. For example, Brittany S. Pears, a popular cheerleader in the story is amazingly simple-minded and most characters in the TV show just consider her stupid, as well as Noah Puckerman or "Puck", he barely graduates high school as he is a popular football player in high school. He obviously represents the "stupid jock" that is a common stereotype in todays society which of course isn't true. These characters come from all over the map and throughout the tv series you learn more about their stories, but something they all have in common is that they are all participants in the Glee club. Personally, I find it quite entertaining how the writers and director of the show include so many major issues or topics in our society today. These issues include: same-sex relationships, teenage pregnancy, bullying, abusive relationships, obesity and many more. I think it is the perfect kind of TV show for this generation mostly because it addresses previously said issues as well as seeing the issues get fixed and the affected people eventually succeed. Now just starting its fourth season, Glee has been a success. It attracts all ages of an audience because of multiple reasons, one being the large variety of music and songs that are performed. From top 40, to oldies from the 80's and basically every genre, Glee, puts its own spin on every song that is sung. Once a popular song is sung and is well-known and done on glee, haters often declare that Glee has killed that song. I think it's funny, because sometimes I agree and yet I still love and watch it. For example, poker face by Lady Gaga, they really slowed it down and I thought it was really well done, but everyone else that has heard it, that I've talked to hates it and thinks it was a terrible cover. So many different people watch glee and have their own perspective on it just like everything else, the unique thing about glee is that such a variety of people can relate to it and it covers main topics and current songs in society.